“An injunction ensures that competition for charitable dollars is based on truth, not catchy, content-free, deceptive songs,” the California judge wrote.
WASHINGTON — If you have a radio, you’ve probably heard their jingle. But do you know who Kars4Kids benefits?
After a California Superior Court judge ordered the organization to stop playing its ads on state airwaves, the charity, which provides programs for Orthodox Jewish youth, argued its religious mission has been “abundantly clear” and vowed to appeal the ruling.
“It’s well known that we are a Jewish organization,” Kars4Kids posted on its website over the weekend, with charity leadership referring to the suit as “a lawyer-driven attempt to siphon off charitable funds for their own gain.” The organization, based in the predominantly Orthodox Jewish city of Lakewood, N.J., claims it has helped “hundreds” of Californians.
Judge Gassia Apkarian apparently disagreed, ruling in favor of the plaintiffs who felt duped by the lack of mention of Orthodox Judaism or religious affiliation in the ads.
Among the strictest adherents of Jewish law, Orthodox Jews are typically expected to observe a regulated diet, participate in daily prayers and incorporate the study of sacred Jewish texts like the Torah and Talmud into their educational curriculum. The umbrella term can refer to more insular groups like Hasidic Jews or more liberal wings like Modern Orthodoxy.
“The evidence demonstrates that these omissions are inherently deceptive,” Superior Court Judge Gassia Apkarian wrote in her opinion on May 8 from an Orange County courtroom, arguing that the ads created an unfair playing field for charities “honest about their missions.”
“An injunction ensures that competition for charitable dollars is based on truth, not catchy, content-free, deceptive songs,” Apkarian wrote.
The ruling stems from a 54-page class action complaint filed in November 2025 by two men from San Francisco, who claimed they donated their Audi and Mitsubishi cars to Kars4Kids without a full understanding of the organization’s goals.
Kars4Kids, which urges radio listeners and TV viewers to “donate your cars today!” first played on New York radio stations in the late 1990s and has since become so widely known that they even inspired parodies on TV series like “Saturday Night Live” and “The Good Place.”
Kars4Kids was founded in 1995 by Oorah, a Jewish organization that practices ritual outreach known as Kiruv. On its website, Oorah boasts programs for helping students attend yeshiva — Orthodox Jewish schools — in Israel and a religious tutoring service, known as TorahMates.
While Kars4Kids says on its website that it is a specifically Jewish nonprofit, the complaint argues that the link to the website is displayed for “less than one second” during the ad.
“While promoting strict tenets of Judaism to an exclusive group in a limited geographic area may be a worthy endeavor for donors intending to do so, defendants designed their ads to conceal this true purpose,” the complaint reads.
Only about 9% of Jews in the United States identify as Orthodox, according to Pew Research. Reform Judaism, a more liberal sect, has the most adherents at 37%, followed by Jews who are not affiliated with any particular branch at 32%. Only about 2% of the United States is Jewish, meaning only about 600,000 Americans identify as Orthodox Jews.