## Facts

- The Knesset enacted an enabling statute that allows local authorities to restrict or prohibit the sale of pig meat and pig-meat products within a municipality.
- Relying on that statute, several municipalities—including Tiberias, Beit Shemesh, and Carmiel—adopted bylaws that prohibited or severely restricted pork sales in all or significant parts of their municipal areas.
- Marina Solodkin petitioned the Supreme Court of Israel sitting as the High Court of Justice (HCJ), challenging the validity of the municipal bylaws (and, indirectly, their use of the enabling statute).
- Solodkin argued that the bylaws violated vendors’ freedom of occupation and burdened consumers’ ability to maintain a chosen way of life free from religious coercion.
- Multiple HCJ petitions concerning different municipalities’ pork-sale bylaws were heard together because they raised overlapping statutory, constitutional, and administrative-law questions.

## Issues

1. Does the enabling statute permit local authorities to prohibit or restrict pork sales, and if so, what criteria must guide that municipal decision?
2. How must municipalities balance the protection of “religious and national sensibilities” against the infringement of the rights of those who wish to sell or consume pork, including freedom of occupation and liberty in personal lifestyle choices?
3. Must restrictions be determined with attention to the local character of the population in different neighborhoods, rather than by imposing a uniform, municipality-wide scheme?

## Decision

- The Court held that the enabling statute’s purposes allow municipalities to prohibit or restrict the sale of pig meat and pig-meat products, but only when the municipality acts on proper criteria.
- The Court required a reasoned balancing between (a) the religious and national sensibilities of residents who object to pork sales and (b) the harm to the human rights of those who wish to sell or consume pork, including freedom of occupation and freedom from religious coercion.
- The Court ruled that this balancing must be conducted in light of the local character of the population in each neighborhood; a municipality may not treat the entire city as socially uniform when deciding where restrictions apply.
- The Court did not issue a final ruling on whether any specific bylaw’s particular map of prohibited and permitted areas was lawful.
- The Court returned the matter to the local authorities to reconsider their bylaws under the standards stated in the judgment; the petitions were formally denied.

## Legal Principles

- A statute authorizing local regulation that affects protected rights must be applied consistently with Israel’s constitutional rights framework, including the Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation and related liberty interests.
- Protecting religious and national sensibilities may be a legitimate public purpose, but it does not automatically justify broad prohibitions that substantially burden occupation and personal choice.
- Municipal decision-making must rest on proper criteria and administrative-law standards of reasonableness: identifying the competing interests, weighing them, and selecting measures whose burdens are justified by the benefits.
- Proportionality requires tailoring: where offense to sensibilities is linked to the public character of specific areas, restrictions should be assessed neighborhood by neighborhood, taking account of local population character and patterns of life.
- A local majority’s preferences cannot, by themselves, settle the balance; the municipality must account for minority residents and consumers and for the practical impact on access to lawful products and the ability to engage in lawful commerce.

## Conclusion

Solodkin upheld the statutory framework permitting municipal limits on pork sales, but required municipalities to justify any prohibition or restriction through a reasoned, proportionate balance between offended religious/national sensibilities and the rights of those seeking to sell or consume pork, with the balance performed according to the local character of each neighborhood and reconsidered by the municipalities under the Court’s criteria.


Solodkin v. Mayor of Tiberias, HCJ 953/01, 58(5) PD 595 (2004)