Lawmakers Seek to Prevent Banning of Mezuzahs

WASHINGTON — When Monica Lundeen Smith and Michael Smith got a letter from their condo owners association asking them to take down “the item” on their doorframe, they assumed it was a simple misunderstanding.

The association, the couple figured, must not have known that the object was a mezuzah, a small box with a scroll inside that Jews traditionally affix to their doorposts.

“We thought we just needed to have the opportunity to explain to these people that it’s part of our religion, that we can’t take it down,” said Lundeen Smith, who was renting the Houston condo with her boyfriend, who is now her husband.

But the association persisted, she said, and two years later, the Texas Legislature is considering a bill inspired by their experience.

Homeowners associations wouldn’t be allowed to ban mezuzahs or other religious objects from home entrances under a bill by Rep. Garnet Coleman, D-Houston, that the Texas House passed in April. The measure is now in the Senate, where it has been referred to the Committee on Intergovernmental Relations. It is similar to legislation passed in Illinois in 2006.

“It’s silly to me that anyone would be opposed to the placement of a mezuzah,” Coleman said. Not only are mezuzahs religiously significant, he said, they’re also “generally very small.”

Last year, Lundeen Smith and Smith, both now 24, sued the Heights at Madison Park Condominium Association Inc. and its president. The couple’s lawyer — Dan Lundeen, Lundeen Smith’s father — argued that the condo policy was discriminatory, but U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes threw out the case.

David Wilson II, a Houston lawyer who represented the condo association, said the rule was not discriminatory because residents were not allowed to put any decorations at the entry of their home, so it wasn’t targeting Jews. People who don’t agree with condo rules “can elect to live elsewhere in locations not governed by those rules,” Wilson said.

Soon after their case was thrown out, the couple moved. “The first thing we asked the new apartment was, ‘Can we hang a mezuzah?’ ” said Lundeen Smith, whose father took the issue to Coleman.

Austin Democratic Rep. Elliott Naishtat, a joint author of Coleman’s bill, said it’s important to protect the right to put up a mezuzah.

A mezuzah serves as “a reminder that you should act in accordance with Jewish laws and the Torah,” said Naishtat, who is Jewish. Arriving home, “you’re reminded that you should act with love and devotion to your family, and when you leave, you’re reminded to behave in the highest level in the world.”

House Bill 3025 says that a property owners association may not prohibit a resident “from displaying or affixing on the entry to the owner’s or resident’s dwelling one or more religious items that reflect a tenet of the owner’s or resident’s religion.”

Lundeen Smith, a high school teacher who plans to move soon with her husband from Houston to Connecticut for graduate school, said she hopes the legislation passes so it can help others in their native Texas.

And she said that she now knows to ask condos beforehand about mezuzahs.

“From here on out,” she said, “that will be a question we ask before we sign any paperwork anywhere.”