July 2018 Member of Knesset Akram Hasson (Kulanu) and other Israeli Druze officials filed a petition with the Supreme Court of Israel challenging the constitutionality of the law. This was followed in January 2019 by a petition filed by the Association for Civil Rights in Israel. The Supreme Court announced that challenges to the constitutionality of the law would be heard by an 11-justice panel and would decide if the law, in whole or in part, violates the Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty, considered the country’s foundational legal basis. The hearing would be the first time the Supreme Court addressed the question of whether it has the authority to strike down another Basic Law in whole or in part on such a basis. The Supreme Court issued its decision on the constitutionality of the law in July 2021. In a 10-1 ruling, the court declared that the law was constitutional and did not negate the state’s democratic character. Writing the opinion for the majority, President of the Court, Esther Hayut, stated that "This basic law is but one chapter in our constitution taking shape and it does not negate Israel's character as a democratic state." The court's majority opinion concurred with arguments that the law merely declares the obvious — that Israel is a Jewish state — and that this does not detract from the individual rights of non-Jewish citizens, especially in light of other laws that ensure equal rights to all. The lone dissenting judge was Justice George Karra, an Arab member of the court. In a separate case, in November 2020, an Israeli magistrate's court ruled, based on the law as justification, that the northern city of Karmiel was a "Jewish city", and that Arabic-language schools or funding transport for Arab schoolchildren would be liable to alter the city’s demographic balance and damage its character. The ruling essentially blocked access to schools for Arab children in Karmiel. The court implied that facilitating this access would incentivize Palestinian Arab citizens of Israel to move into the city, thus damaging its "Jewish character." Israel's attorney general opposed the ruling and stated that the court had interpreted the law incorrectly. Upon appeal, the Haifa District Court ruled that the lower court's initial dismissal of the claims for funding and transportation were an inappropriate application of the Nation-State law, and called the decision "fundamentally wrong." Controversy Controversy has surrounded the Basic