When trying an earlier version of the gem
`gem 'jquery-rails', '2.0.2'`
the dependency is even higher:
In Gemfile:
jquery-rails (= 2.0.2) ruby depends on
railties (< 5.0, >= 3.2.0) ruby
So for Rails 3.0.15 I ended up taking out the version from the Gemfile altogether and ended up with version 1.0.19.
Installing jquery-rails (1.0.19)