Wood took on Easterbrook in the mezuzah case — which I wrote about here ten months ago. The plaintiff, Lynne Bloch (filing with her daughter, Helen, and son, Nathan), complained that in 2004 the Shoreline Towers Condominium Association had forbidden her to put up a mezuzah outside her door, a dictate she could only obey by breaking Jewish law. Bloch challenged the ban in federal court, where a judge granted summary judgment to the condo association. Bloch appealed, and last July a panel of three judges upheld the lower court, Easterbrook writing the majority opinion and Wood dissenting. I commented, “Judges don’t always disagree with each other for fancy philosophical reasons. The Bloch suit strikes me as a case in which judges disagree because one [Wood] thinks harder about a matter than the other.” Wood’s 17-page dissent was not only almost three times as long as Easterbrook’s decision, it struck me as more carefully reasoned. Wood simply took the matter more seriously.
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Bloch pressed on. And the Seventh Circuit, remarkably, decided she had raised such a serious issue that the entire circuit should consider it. Oral arguments took place Wednesday morning in a packed courtroom, with Wood “in the spotlight,” as the Sun-Times put it. Wood led the questioning of the two sides’ attorneys, with Easterbrook also asking plenty of questions.
