diff --git a/lucene/CHANGES.txt b/lucene/CHANGES.txt
index 0d4bcfcfa05..c9fdf4e1ada 100644
--- a/lucene/CHANGES.txt
+++ b/lucene/CHANGES.txt
@@ -54,6 +54,9 @@ Optimizations
 * LUCENE-4184: Performance improvements to the aligned packed bits impl.
   (Toke Eskildsen, Adrien Grand)
 
+* LUCENE-4235: Remove enforcing of Filter rewrite for NRQ queries.
+  (Uwe Schindler)
+
 Bug Fixes
 
 * LUCENE-4176: Fix AnalyzingQueryParser to analyze range endpoints as bytes,
diff --git a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/NumericRangeQuery.java b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/NumericRangeQuery.java
index 24fa0fb36c1..8dbb146507f 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/NumericRangeQuery.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/java/org/apache/lucene/search/NumericRangeQuery.java
@@ -173,35 +173,6 @@ public final class NumericRangeQuery<T extends Number> extends MultiTermQuery {
     this.max = max;
     this.minInclusive = minInclusive;
     this.maxInclusive = maxInclusive;
-
-    // For bigger precisionSteps this query likely
-    // hits too many terms, so set to CONSTANT_SCORE_FILTER right off
-    // (especially as the FilteredTermsEnum is costly if wasted only for AUTO tests because it
-    // creates new enums from IndexReader for each sub-range)
-    switch (dataType) {
-      case LONG:
-      case DOUBLE:
-        setRewriteMethod( (precisionStep > 6) ?
-          CONSTANT_SCORE_FILTER_REWRITE : 
-          CONSTANT_SCORE_AUTO_REWRITE_DEFAULT
-        );
-        break;
-      case INT:
-      case FLOAT:
-        setRewriteMethod( (precisionStep > 8) ?
-          CONSTANT_SCORE_FILTER_REWRITE : 
-          CONSTANT_SCORE_AUTO_REWRITE_DEFAULT
-        );
-        break;
-      default:
-        // should never happen
-        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Invalid numeric NumericType");
-    }
-    
-    // shortcut if upper bound == lower bound
-    if (min != null && min.equals(max)) {
-      setRewriteMethod(CONSTANT_SCORE_BOOLEAN_QUERY_REWRITE);
-    }
   }
   
   /**
@@ -319,9 +290,10 @@ public final class NumericRangeQuery<T extends Number> extends MultiTermQuery {
   @Override @SuppressWarnings("unchecked")
   protected TermsEnum getTermsEnum(final Terms terms, AttributeSource atts) throws IOException {
     // very strange: java.lang.Number itsself is not Comparable, but all subclasses used here are
-    return (min != null && max != null && ((Comparable<T>) min).compareTo(max) > 0) ?
-      TermsEnum.EMPTY :
-      new NumericRangeTermsEnum(terms.iterator(null));
+    if (min != null && max != null && ((Comparable<T>) min).compareTo(max) > 0) {
+      return TermsEnum.EMPTY;
+    }
+    return new NumericRangeTermsEnum(terms.iterator(null));
   }
 
   /** Returns <code>true</code> if the lower endpoint is inclusive */
diff --git a/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery32.java b/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery32.java
index 456ec914cb3..b5765fd9c52 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery32.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery32.java
@@ -211,7 +211,6 @@ public class TestNumericRangeQuery32 extends LuceneTestCase {
   @Test
   public void testOneMatchQuery() throws Exception {
     NumericRangeQuery<Integer> q = NumericRangeQuery.newIntRange("ascfield8", 8, 1000, 1000, true, true);
-    assertSame(MultiTermQuery.CONSTANT_SCORE_BOOLEAN_QUERY_REWRITE, q.getRewriteMethod());
     TopDocs topDocs = searcher.search(q, noDocs);
     ScoreDoc[] sd = topDocs.scoreDocs;
     assertNotNull(sd);
diff --git a/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery64.java b/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery64.java
index 82dc587a1cb..fb307355269 100644
--- a/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery64.java
+++ b/lucene/core/src/test/org/apache/lucene/search/TestNumericRangeQuery64.java
@@ -226,7 +226,6 @@ public class TestNumericRangeQuery64 extends LuceneTestCase {
   @Test
   public void testOneMatchQuery() throws Exception {
     NumericRangeQuery<Long> q = NumericRangeQuery.newLongRange("ascfield8", 8, 1000L, 1000L, true, true);
-    assertSame(MultiTermQuery.CONSTANT_SCORE_BOOLEAN_QUERY_REWRITE, q.getRewriteMethod());
     TopDocs topDocs = searcher.search(q, noDocs);
     ScoreDoc[] sd = topDocs.scoreDocs;
     assertNotNull(sd);