New York City Council Member Fernando Cabrera who has played an important role in protesting against the City’s policy and who introduced Resolution 1155 in the New York City Council, urging the state legislature to act to repeal this policy, is hopeful about the preliminary injunction. He believes it should push the New York State legislature to act.

“The New York State Assembly should wait no longer,” said Council Member Fernando Cabrera. “Speaker Sheldon Silver expressed concerns about the bill and now it is sufficiently evident that there are indisputable grounds to repeal this policy. The bill has 74 formal co-sponsors in the assembly, and others who support it. If it were brought to the floor today, it would pass. I urge Speaker Sheldon Silver to bring this bill to the floor for a vote.” A bill that would compel the city’s Department of Education to allow the worship services passed the state senate this month and is awaiting action by the state assembly.

The preliminary injunction against the city’s unique-in-the-nation prohibition on worship services in vacant public school buildings on weekends comes on the heels of a temporary order that allowed the Bronx Household of Faith to meet for 10 days.

Bronx Household of Faith sought the injunction on Feb. 3 from the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to stop the evictions based on violations of the First Amendment that had not been ruled on previously in the case, Bronx Household of Faith v. Board of Education of the City of New York.

“In this Court’s view, losing one’s right to exercise freely and fully his or her religious beliefs is a greater threat to our democratic society than a misperceived violation of the Establishment Clause,” the court wrote in its opinion accompanying the order.