27 Summer 2025 n the aftermath of Hamas’s violent terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, college and university campuses across America immediately became hightension breeding grounds for rampant antisemitism. In the months that followed, Jewish students – who were victims of intimidation, harassment, physical violence, and hateful rhetoric by peers and professors – filed lawsuits against numerous top-tier academic institutions ranging from members of the Ivy League, such as the University of Pennsylvania (“Penn”), Brown University, Harvard University, and Columbia University, to New York University (“NYU”), University of California, Los Angeles (“UCLA”), and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (“MIT”), among others. In many cases, advocacy groups whose mission is to fight antisemitism joined as plaintiffs. While there have been a number of different kinds of such antisemitism lawsuits post-October 7, this article focuses on cases asserting claims and complaints under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (“Title VI”). It has now been a little over a year since the first of these cases was filed, with a fair number resulting in injunctions, rulings on dispositive motions, and settlements, making this an opportune time to survey the field and provide initial lessons and impressions from this very active and important litigation ecosystem. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal funding or other federal financial assistance.1 Religion is not a protected category under Title VI; it does, however, protect against discrimination based on shared ancestry or ethnic background, such that the ancestral and ethnic characteristics underpinning antisemitism entitle Jewish students to protection under Title VI. Specifically, on May 25, 2023, the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”) released a statement affirming that Title VI covers antisemitism. The OCR explained that Title VI protects “all students, including students who are or are perceived to be Jewish” against discrimination “based on their actual or perceived: (i) shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics; or (ii) citizenship or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity.”2 Against this backdrop in mind, we will discuss key rulings in a number of cases – some of which are ongoing, and others of which have been decided or settled on terms that promise meaningful changes on the ground. Going forward, courts will undoubtedly look to the judiciary’s reasoning in these benchmark decisions, and to the terms of these settlements, when addressing future challenges brought against higher education’s responses to antisemitism. In the August 2024 case Frankel v. Regents of the University of California, U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi issued an injunction against UCLA, ruling that the school was required to provide Jewish students with unfettered access to campus facilities.3 The lawsuit was filed by three Jewish students who alleged that protesters blocked their entry to certain campus areas because of their faith. The facts of this case included clear evidence that UCLA allowed protesters to create a “Jew Exclusion Zone” on campus. In his decision, Judge Scarsi passionately denounced UCLA. He wrote, “In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating: Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because One Year Later: Antisemitism Lawsuits on College Campuses Akiva Shapiro, Harley Belmont, and Shayan Kohanteb 1. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. § 2000(d). 2. U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights, Discrimination Against Jewish Students Dear Colleague Letter (May 2023), available at https://www.ed.gov/sites/ ed/files/about/offices/list/ocr/docs/antisemitism-dcl. pdf?utm_content=&utm_medium=email&utm_ name=&utm_source=govdelivery&utm_term= 3. Frankel v. Regents of the University of California, 744 F.Supp.3d 1015 (C.D. Cal., 2024). I
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjgzNzA=