Israel's High Court of Justice today dismissed a petition by the Association of Merchants and Independents against a municipal bylaw allowing supermarkets and cafes to open in Tel Aviv on Saturdays. The vote was 5-2, with Justices Noam Solberg and Neal Hendel dissenting.
The ruling was one of the last two by Supreme Court President Miriam Naor, who is retiring today (the second involved a soldier convicted of using illegal drugs). Naor wrote the majority opinion and read its main points at the beginning of her retirement ceremony. Justice Esther Hayut, appointed today to replace Naor as Supreme Court president, supported Naor's opinion. At the conclusion of her remarks, Naor emphasized that her ruling was not seeking to express a secular or a religious outlook, saying that it reflected her best understanding of the right interpretation of the law.
The hearing, the second in the case, was before an expanded panel of judges, after Naor, Hayut, and Justice Daphne Barak-Erez already ruled that the Tel Aviv municipality was entitled to open supermarkets on the Sabbath, mainly in a limited number of locations, as well as food stores and cafes.
The Association of Merchants and Independents asked for another hearing for its petition, claiming, among other things, that the Tel Aviv municipality's decision contravened the Hours of Work and Rest Law, while Minister of the Interior and the Development of the Negev and the Galilee Aryeh Deri also asked for another hearing. Deri expressed concern that giving businesses a permit to operate on the Sabbath would cause "extensive damage to the appearance and character of the Sabbath at the national level." In July, then-Supreme Court VP Elyakim Rubinstein accepted the request for another hearing on the issue, the results of which were announced today.
Naor ruled that the position of Deri, who opposes businesses opening on the Sabbath, could not affect the validity of the amendment to the municipal bylaw allowing businesses to open. Naor said that Deri's stance "is unreasonable, because it did not give proper weight to the municipality's special autonomous status, which is a basic principle of local administration."
Published by Globes [online], Israel Business News - www.globes-online.com - on October 26, 2017
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