FLUSHING, NEW YORK, July 28, 2005: A fierce legal battle is being fought between members of the Hindu Temple Society, who worship at the Ganesh Temple on Bowne Street in Flushing. The battle over who will lead a prominent Hindu temple in Flushing has taken on a new twist, with a lawsuit filed on behalf of a temple cook who claims he was exploited. The lawsuit comes two weeks after Attorney General Eliot Spitzer filed a brief questioning a state court decision ordering the temple to elect its trustees. A motion to strike that brief was signed by a State Supreme Court judge. The lawyer suing the temple in the original case is suing again–this time accusing the temple of violating immigration and labor laws. “It is absolutely outrageous that a sweatshop should be run under the garb of religion,” said Krishnan Chittur, who won a suit two years ago forcing the temple to elect its trustees. The temple is appealing the decision. “They are working 70 hours a week and they are entitled to be paid what they are entitled to be paid under the law.”
Filed in federal court on July 14th, the lawsuit claims the temple’s cooks and priests are forced to work 65 hours a week, six days a week, without overtime. According to Chittur, this is a violation of the Fair Labor Standards Act and New York’s labor laws. “This is the latest round in Mr. Chittur’s attempt to attack the temple. We believe that it’s gong to be thrown out very quickly,” said Roman Storzer, a lawyer from the Becket Fund, an interdenominational law firm that is representing the temple. Storzer added that the labor laws cited in the lawsuit cover commercial, not religious workers.
The lawsuit also accuses the temple of obtaining religious worker visas for its cooks under the pretext that they would only be performing religious duties such as preparing cooked offerings and food for religious festivals. Chittur says the cooks in fact function as ordinary restaurant cooks at the temple’s canteen and for private catering assignments outside the temple’s premises. “It’s not a restaurant. Nobody comes in off the street who’s not worshipping there,” Storzer said. Storzer said that although anyone can eat at the canteen, it is difficult to find and passers-by are unlikely to know of its existence, unless they are worshipping at the temple. Elaine Chiu, a law professor at St. John’s University, said many religious organizations operate restaurants for worshippers and that it would be hard to distinguish among those who are visiting the canteen to get a religiously-prepared meal in conjunction with their worship and those who might simply be there because they are hungry. “I’m not sure if that would be fatal to their status,” she said. The class-action lawsuit was filed against the temple and its director, Dr. Uma Mysorekar, on behalf of the temple’s cooks and priests. Only one cook has chosen to participate in the lawsuit.
Chittur’s suit is the latest move in a four-year legal battle between the temple’s 11 trustees and a group of 6 dissident members, represented by Chittur, who want to replace them with a group of trustees elected by the temple’s congregation. In 2003, in response to a suit brought in state court, Judge Joseph Golia appointed a referee to oversee the election of a new board of trustees. The temple has been appealing this decision, and on June 30th Attorney General Spitzer intervened in the case in their favor. In a brief before the appellate division of the New York State Supreme Court, which is hearing the temple’s appeal, Spitzer argued that forcing the temple to elect its trustees constituted misguided interference in the temple’s affairs. As the state’s chief lawyer, the attorney general can intervene as of right in cases where one litigant calls into question the constitutionality of any state statute. In this case, the temple’s current board of trustees argued that the state’s Religious Corporations Act is unconstitutional in the way in which it was applied to them. The State Supreme Court still has to rule on whether to reject Spitzer’s brief, after a judge signed Chittur’s motion asking that the court remove the brief from consideration.
“The attorney general has chosen to go aggressively way beyond his statutory authority in order to negate the hard-earned right of about 8,000 Hindus to have a voice in the management of the temple,” Chittur said. He said Spitzer is acting as a surrogate to raise arguments the court has barred the trustees from making, calling the brief “substantially ridiculous” and “not even procedurally proper.” Storzer believes it is unlikely that the court will strike the attorney general’s brief. Chittur said Golia has also scheduled a hearing to determine whether the temple’s current trustees, the ones who could be replaced in an election, should be spending the temple’s money to fight his decision. “This is not about a trustee being able to retain his or her position,” Storzer said. “These people don’t get paid for their position, it’s purely volunteer work. It’s really an issue of the temple’s own rights.”