‘Unconstitutional’: AG blasts bill to preserve daycare subsidies for kids of Haredi men who defy draft

The Attorney General’s Office declares as “unconstitutional” a bill being advanced by the coalition to guarantee that the children of ultra-Orthodox men who are obligated to perform military service, but have not, will continue to be eligible for state-paid daycare subsidies.

“A Knesset law cannot be considered constitutional if it means that the principle of equality will be harmed through state and institutional encouragement of avoiding conscription into the IDF in defiance of the Law for Security Services, contrary to the needs of the IDF, and contrary to the obligation of equal burden [in military service],” the Attorney General’s Office tells Justice Minister Yariv Levin.

The bill, a key political demand of the ultra-Orthodox coalition parties, is scheduled for a vote today in the Ministerial Committee for Legislation, which Levin chairs.

The legislation is a private member’s bill, however, meaning that it does not need the approval of the Attorney General’s Office to be advanced in Knesset.

Previously the law allowed families in which a mother works and a father who studies full time in yeshiva in lieu of military service to receive the subsidies, worth thousands of shekels a month for ultra-Orthodox families.

The attorney general declared the arrangement illegal after the High Court of Justice ruled in June that ultra-Orthodox men are obligated to enlist in the IDF and that financial support for such students was also illegal by extension.

The daycare subsidies constitute a critical component of the household economy of many ultra-Orthodox families, which is why the Haredi parties have exerted heavy pressure on the government to reinstate them. This pressure has increased due to the government’s inability at present to pass a new law reinstating blanket military service exemptions for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students, as the Haredi parties have also demanded.