## Facts

- New Jersey’s Division of Consumer Affairs adopted kosher-food regulations under the Consumer Fraud Act.
- The rules made it an unlawful consumer practice to sell food “falsely represented to be Kosher.”
- The regulations defined “kosher” as food “prepared and maintained in strict compliance with the laws and customs of the Orthodox Jewish religion.”
- The enforcement structure incorporated religious authorities, including an Orthodox rabbi serving as chief enforcement official and an advisory council composed entirely of rabbis.
- Ran-Dav’s County Kosher, a kosher catering business, was targeted in enforcement actions for allegedly violating the Orthodox-based kosher standards.
- Ran-Dav’s and related plaintiffs challenged the scheme under the Establishment Clause and parallel provisions of the New Jersey Constitution.
- The Appellate Division upheld the regulations, and the New Jersey Supreme Court granted review.

## Issues

1. Whether regulations defining “kosher” by “the laws and customs of the Orthodox Jewish religion” and enforced with rabbinic involvement violate the Establishment Clause and New Jersey’s Religion Clauses.
2. Whether the State may protect consumers from kosher fraud by enforcing religious dietary law as a civil standard.

## Decision

- The New Jersey Supreme Court invalidated the kosher-food regulatory scheme.
- The court held that incorporating Orthodox Jewish law as the operative legal definition of “kosher,” and using clergy to interpret and enforce that definition, created excessive government entanglement with religion.
- The matter was remanded for further proceedings consistent with the opinion, leaving room for constitutionally permissible consumer-protection alternatives.

## Legal Principles

- Government may pursue secular consumer-protection goals, including preventing fraud in religiously significant markets, but it may not codify and enforce substantive religious doctrine as civil law.
- A regulatory framework that requires state actors to interpret religious texts, resolve doctrinal disputes, or police compliance with religious law violates the Establishment Clause through excessive entanglement.
- Government must remain neutral among religious denominations; selecting a single sect’s standards as the legal benchmark constitutes impermissible denominational preference.
- The New Jersey Constitution’s religion protections independently bar state systems that entwine governmental power with religious authority in defining and enforcing religious obligations.
- Kosher-fraud regulation is not per se unconstitutional; disclosure-based or otherwise secular, objective approaches may be permissible if they avoid state determinations of religious correctness.

## Conclusion

New Jersey could protect consumers from false kosher claims, but it could not do so by adopting Orthodox Jewish law as the binding definition of “kosher” and embedding rabbinic authorities into enforcement, because that structure excessively entangled the State with religion and failed the required governmental neutrality.


Ran-Dav's Cnty. Kosher, Inc. v. State, 129 N.J. 141, 608 A.2d 1353 (1992)