JTA — Orthodox US Jewish groups have urged the country’s Supreme Court to take up the case of an Orthodox Jewish man ordered by officials in University Heights, Ohio, to stop hosting prayer services in his home without a permit.

The amicus brief, which was filed Friday by the National Jewish Advocacy Center alongside the Orthodox Union and the National Council of Young Israel, comes years after Daniel Grand, a resident of the suburb of Cleveland, invited a group of Jewish men to his home for Shabbat services starting in January 2021.

At the time, University Heights, citing zoning laws, issued a cease-and-desist order blocking Grand from using his home for prayer.

Grand initially applied for a special use permit to use his home as “a place of religious assembly” in 2021, but later withdrew the application, saying he did not “wish to operate a house of worship as is defined under the zoning ordinance.”

According to the NJAC, the former mayor of University Heights, Michael Dylan Brennan, then encouraged Grand’s “neighbors to watch his home and report any sign of Jewish worship to the authorities.”

“What happened to Daniel Grand is not an isolated incident,” Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, the CEO of NJAC, said in a statement. “It is the latest chapter in a long and documented history of municipalities using zoning laws to suppress Orthodox Jewish religious practice.”

The city’s current mayor, Michele Weiss, who was elected last fall, told JTA that there was currently one residence in the city that had obtained a special permit to host worship gatherings and that another was........

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