The bitter legal battle over a proposed Orthodox Jewish mikvah in Pine Lake Park has taken a dramatic turn — and the project that was unanimously rejected by the Manchester Township Zoning Board may not be dead after all, FAA News can now report.
The parties have agreed to send the controversial application back before the Zoning Board for a special Whispering Woods hearing on November 12, 2026, opening the door to a potential negotiated approval of the mikvah without waiting for a judge to decide the sprawling lawsuit.
Superior Court Assigned Judge Francis R. Hodgson Jr. signed the consent Remand Order on August 24 following an earlier case-management conference. The order states that the parties agreed to remand the portions of the lawsuit concerning the Zoning Board's denial back to the Board for the special hearing.
And the Court has put a firm deadline on the process: if the settlement hearing does not successfully resolve the zoning dispute, the case is scheduled to proceed to trial on February 26, 2027.
What Is A Whispering Woods Hearing?
This isn't simply another round of the same zoning hearings that packed the Manchester Township High School auditorium last year.
A Whispering Woods hearing is the procedure used in New Jersey when parties to a land-use lawsuit reach — or are attempting to reach — a settlement that would involve municipal land-use approval.
Because a Zoning Board cannot simply settle litigation behind closed doors by privately agreeing to approve an application, the proposed resolution must be presented publicly before the Board. The public gets notice and an opportunity to be heard, and the Board considers whether the proposed settlement and resulting land-use approval should be accepted.
That makes November 12 potentially the most consequential hearing yet.
Instead of Congregation Mikvah of Pine Lake Park returning merely to reargue the application that seven Board members previously rejected, the hearing creates a procedural avenue through which the litigation could be resolved and the mikvah potentially approved pursuant to a settlement.
Importantly, however, the Consent Order does not say that Manchester has agreed to approve the mikvah. Nor does scheduling a Whispering Woods hearing guarantee that a settlement will ultimately be reached or approved.
What it does establish is that, only months after the Board's unanimous rejection triggered a massive RLUIPA and constitutional lawsuit, all sides have now agreed to put the matter back before the Zoning Board in an effort to resolve the zoning dispute.
That represents a remarkable change in posture.
As FAA News previously reported here, the Congregation sued Manchester Township and its Zoning Board after the Board unanimously rejected its proposal to convert a Pine Lake Park residence into a community mikvah.
The lawsuit, brought by prominent RLUIPA attorney Donna Jennings, did far more than challenge the Board's decision as an ordinary zoning appeal.
It alleged that Manchester's entire zoning scheme unlawfully discriminates against the Orthodox Jewish community, pointing out that a public mikvah is not a permitted principal use anywhere in the Township and therefore requires the difficult process of obtaining a d(1) use variance.
The Congregation also alleged that the Board's rejection came against the backdrop of extraordinary public hostility, including numerous anti-Semitic Facebook comments and an organized push for residents to attend the hearings and oppose the project.
The complaint alleges that approximately 600 Orthodox Jewish families now live in Pine Lake Park, yet Manchester has no public mikvah serving the community.
After five hearings and extensive testimony from the Congregation's engineer, architect, traffic engineer and professional planner, all seven Zoning Board members nevertheless voted against the application.
The lawsuit followed.
Now, rather than simply defending that denial all the way through trial, Manchester and the Congregation have agreed upon a process that could potentially produce an entirely different result.
But The Judge Is Keeping The Lawsuit Moving
Judge Hodgson isn't allowing the case to disappear into indefinite settlement discussions.
The Court has already placed February 26, 2027 on the calendar for trial if the Whispering Woods process fails.
That creates two dramatically different possible paths for the case:
November 12: the parties present a potential resolution publicly to the Zoning Board, with the possibility that the once-rejected mikvah ultimately receives approval.
February 26: if that effort fails, the parties head back to Superior Court for a trial over the Board's denial.
And even a zoning settlement may not necessarily end every aspect of the litigation. Page two of Judge Hodgson's order separately contemplates voluntary mediation concerning the remaining damages claims and states that, if those claims cannot be resolved, they will proceed through discovery and trial.
That is particularly significant because the original complaint did not merely ask a judge to overturn the zoning decision — it also asserted federal RLUIPA and constitutional claims and sought damages.
In other words, approval of the mikvah could potentially resolve the fight over whether it gets built without necessarily resolving the entire lawsuit.
For Manchester's rapidly growing Orthodox Jewish community, all eyes will therefore be on November 12, 2026.
A mikvah application that appeared dead following a unanimous seven-member rejection is officially heading back before the very Zoning Board that rejected it — this time with the parties attempting to find a path toward settlement.
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