A yeshiva advocacy group called Parents for Educational and Religious Liberty in Schools, or PEARLS, requested permission on Thursday to have New York’s highest court consider whether the state is allowed to withhold aid to private schools that are found to offer inadequate secular education, and whether parents who send their children to such schools can also be held liable.

It is the latest development in the saga that began in 2022, when PEARLS first sued the state over its regulations about secular education standards in private schools. Since then, two courts have ruled on the case, and now, PEARLS hopes to see a third court, the Court of Appeals, strike down the regulations.

If PEARLS is denied its request, the decision made by New York’s second-highest court, the Appellate Division’s Third Department, will likely stand: the New York State Education Department is allowed to withhold funding and services such as busing and lunch to schools it determines to be inadequate. In at least some cases, the court ruled, parents who continue sending their children to such schools are violating the state’s compulsory education law.

PEARLS, which describes the state’s rules as the voiding of “fundamental rights and liberties,” hopes that the Court of Appeals will strike down the regulations. Avi Schick, PEARLS’ attorney, argues that the state is not legally empowered to withhold funding from schools that are determined to be inadequate. As for parents, Schick argues, they are allowed to supplement a purely religious education with extra tutoring in secular subjects outside of school to avoid violating the compulsory education law. “It is parents and not private schools who face financial and other penalties for failing to comply with the law,” Schick wrote.

PEARLS is adopting some of these arguments from a ruling issued last year from the Supreme Court, which, despite its name, is the lowest court in New York. In that decision, which PEARLS viewed as favorable and which has since been overturned, the court limited the state’s ability to withhold funding or require parents to withdraw their children from inadequate schools.

Schick argues that, in overturning that ruling on June 27, the Appellate Division Third Department contradicts “the long-settled principle that ‘[p]rivate schools have a constitutional right to exist and parents have a constitutional right to send their children to such schools.’”

PEARLS requested permission to appeal from the Appellate Division’s Third Department. If that court rejects the request, PEARLS can separately ask the Court of Appeals directly to take on the case, according to experts who spoke to Shtetl.

The only court that could overrule the Court of Appeals is the U.S. Supreme Court, but experts told Shtetl the Supreme Court would be unlikely to take on the case.