Harrison, New Jersey

Lawyers for two Orthodox Jewish synagogues, Bais Brucha and Khal Anshei, are asking a federal magistrate judge to sanction Toms River, New Jersey, for failing to preserve laptops and phones tied to a religious discrimination lawsuit filed in 2021. The suit alleges the township worked to block expansion of the Orthodox Jewish community through discriminatory zoning, including a former 10-acre house-of-worship minimum and parking rules the shuls say unfairly burden religious sites.

Plaintiffs' attorney Roman Storzer says of 24 relevant township laptops, 11 are missing and three are encrypted; of 25 cell phones, nine are lost and five are inaccessible. A judge already fined Toms River $29,750 in October for contempt over discovery failures. Complicating the case, the township's insurer-appointed law firm is again seeking to withdraw as counsel, a request a judge denied once already. Toms River is separately suing its excess insurance fund for more coverage, arguing the case is a civil rights matter, not a land-use dispute, as the township has already exhausted $2 million in existing coverage.