From today's decision by Judge Rachel Kovner (E.D.N.Y.) in Esses v. Rosen:
Plaintiff Regina Esses has moved for a preliminary injunction under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 65 against defendants Tanya Rosen and Tanya Rosen Inc. enjoining defendants from disseminating a declaration from a rabbinical court and an accompanying instructional document. Plaintiff's motion for a preliminary injunction is denied….
The following facts are taken from plaintiff's filings in support of her motion for a preliminary injunction and are assumed true for purposes of this motion.
Both plaintiff and defendant Tanya Rosen are members of the Orthodox Jewish community. As relevant to plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction, plaintiff asserts that, before she filed this lawsuit, Rosen secured the issuance of a summons against plaintiff by a Jewish rabbinical court, or beth din, called Badatz Mishpitei Yisroel ("BMY"), regarding plaintiff's former employment contract with defendant Tanya Rosen Inc. According to plaintiff, "[u]nder Jewish law, when an individual is summoned to beth din, the recipient has the right to propose an alternative beth din to avoid potential bias or undue influence from the summoner's chosen venue." Plaintiff alleges that "BMY, at Rosen's request, continued to issue summonses demanding [plaintiff's] appearance," even though plaintiff proposed an alternative rabbinical court in New Jersey.
Plaintiff asserts that Rosen later "sought a seiruv from BMY against" plaintiff. According to plaintiff, a "seiruv is a public declaration issued by beth din that a person has refused to comply with rabbinic court orders to appear." The seiruv lists plaintiff's home address and states:
Whereas, close to a year has passed since we have sent out our first summons to [plaintiff] and until this day a Din torah has not been scheduled, we have no choice but to declare [plaintiff] a Mesareves, in addition to her filing in court against [Rosen] without permission from a Bais Din. She claims to have permission from her Rabbi, which she has not substantiated to the Beis Din. Anyone that may impress upon her the severity of the grave sin of refraining from appearing in Beis Din shall do so and it will be to his merit.
Rosen distributed the seiruv, along with an "instructional document" purporting to describe what a seiruv generally entails, "throughout [plaintiff's] neighborhood," in various "Jewish community Whatsapp group chats," and to Rosen's listserv, which contains thousands of recipients. The instructional document describes a seiruv as "a form of contempt order issued by a rabbinical court." It states that the "public declaration serves as a form of social pressure, calling on the community to shun or ostracize the individual until they comply with the court's demands."
