Three residents of a housing complex in New Jersey are launching legal over religious rules that ban men and women from using the swimming pool at the same time for 11 hours each day.
A Country Place, the 376-home community in Lakewood, recently changed its rules to accommodate the majority of its residents who practice the Orthodox Jewish faith. Now, several residents are upset after receiving $50 fines for violating the revised pool policy, The Asbury Park Press reports.
"It is you that is unfair to the vast majority of our residents. The vast majority of people would abolish any mixed swimming because that is the will of the majority," officials with the condo association wrote in a letter responding to complaints.
“ACP is a private association and as per counsel we are well within our rights to serve the vast majority of the community,” the letter stated. “You are inconsiderate of the majority and wish for minority rule. That is not our community.”
The complainants, Marie Curto and Diana and Steve Lusardi, were issued the fines earlier this summer after refusing to leave the pool during single-swimming hours. Their lawsuit claims the pool policy, which allows men and women swim two hours each day, violates the anti-discrimination provisions in the federal Fair Housing Act and the New Jersey Law Against Discrimination.
The Lusardis said they’ve been "harassed, intimidated and have received threats of violence within their community due to their complaints regarding the pool," the local newspaper reports. Mr Lusardi added that nearly a dozen of his community members plan to pay his fines because they believe the policy is unfair, "Two dozen people are ready to pay my fine because they don't think it's right.”
Both parties are due in the state’s Superior Court on November 4.
This isn't the first time the struggle over single-sex pool time became an issue on the East Coast. In September, Hasidic women called to reinstate female-only swim hours at the Metropolitan Recreation Center in Brooklyn after the Parks Department decided to cut the four day policy to just two days out of the week.
