Lawsuit challenges runoff election on Jewish holiday

Davidson County Election Commission has set inevitable runoff poll for date of Rosh Hashanah

Email | Print By Ken Whitehouse

A Davidson County voter has blown the whistle on the Davidson County Election Commission... or should we say the shofar.

Elinor Gregor has filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court challenging the actions of the Davidson County Election Commission in scheduling runoff elections for September 13, the day of the religious holiday of Rosh Hashanah.

Rosh Hashanah is a high holy day in the Jewish faith that literaly translates to "head of the year." It will signify New Year's Day of the year 5768 in the Hebrew calendar beginning at sundown on September 12. The Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew bible, refers to the holiday as "The Day of the Blowing of the Shofar." (A shofar is the horn of a kosher animal.)

Along with Yom Kippur, which follows ten days afterward, Rosh Hashanah is generally considered among the most important Jewish holidays.

The lawsuit, filed by the law firm of Barrett, Johnston and Parsley and seeking class-action status, asserts that the timing of the runoff could prevent Gregor and other observant Jewish voters from casting their votes.

The runoff is currently scheduled to take place on September 13 if the August 2 general municipal election fails to elect a mayor or all members of the Metro Council with an absolute majority of the vote. Given the sheer number of candidates running for at-large seats on the Metro Council, a runoff is inevitable.

The civil-rights lawsuit says that the scheduling of the election deprives observant Jews of their rights under the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, and the Fourteenth Amendment right to Equal Protection of the Laws. It also seeks relief under the Tennessee Constitution.

Many Jews who observe the holiday consider themselves required to attend synagogue and not to engage in work of any sort on that day.

"Ms. Gregor will be required to vote, if she can vote at all, on a date earlier than election day," said George Barrett, one of Gregor's attorneys, paraphrasing the complaint. "So election day will be available to all other, non-Jewish, voters, but not to Jewish voters. That deprives her — and all other Jewish voters — of the equal protection of our voting laws. It takes away from Jewish voters an opportunity to vote that everyone else has."

The lawsuit seeks an early ruling from the federal court.