Source: New York Daily News

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/232867p-199990c.html

On September 17, 2004 the New York Daily News reported, "a bitter legal dispute over control of the nation's oldest Hindu temple should be decided in state courts, a federal judge has ruled. Trustees of the Hindu Temple Society of North America had filed a lawsuit in Brooklyn Federal Court seeking to stop a state judge from establishing a voting membership that would elect a new board of trustees. But Federal Judge Raymond Dearie determined that, despite important First Amendment concerns about the separation of church and state, he would defer jurisdiction over the case to Supreme Court Justice Joseph Golia in Queens. Last year, in response to a suit brought in state court, Golia had appointed a referee, Anthony Piacentini, to oversee the election of a new board of trustees of the temple."