A 42-page lawsuit was filed on Wednesday by two Jewish groups against the University of California, Berkeley for its alleged “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism.”
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education filed the complaint in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco, reporting many “incidents of intimidation, harassment and physical violence” directed towards Jewish students for the very first time.
UC President Michael Drake and UC Berkeley Chancellor Carol Christ were named as defendants among other officials in the complaint.
Twenty-three law student organizations on Berkeley campus have policies that ban Zionist speakers and restrict Jewish law students from accessing networking opportunities, earning pro-bono hours and more, the Brandeis Center alleges in a press release.
The complaint cites UC Berkeley Law Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, who said that the policy “excludes ‘90 percent or more’ of Jewish students at Berkeley law,” according to the press release. Chemerinsky has spoken out about anti-Semitism at Berkeley before.
“I am a 70-year-old Jewish man, but never in my life have I seen or felt the antisemitism of the last few weeks,” Chemerinsky wrote in an Oct. 29 opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times. However, he disagreed with the basis of the lawsuit.
“Student organizations have the First Amendment right to choose their speakers, including based on their viewpoint,” Chemerinsky said to The Hill. “Although there is much that the campus can and does do to create an inclusive learning environment, it cannot stop speech even if it is offensive.”
The lawsuit said UC Berkeley’s lack of action in addressing the student groups’ anti-Semetic policies betrayed not only its Jewish students and faculty, but also UC’s adherence to civil rights and equal treatment.
“The school is quick to address other types of hatred, but why not anti-Semitism?” Kenneth L. Marcus, current founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center, Attorney for Plaintiff, and a graduate of UC Berkeley School of Law, said in the press release.
UC Berkeley said in a statement to KPIX-TV that they believe the complaint is inconsistent with the First Amendment and that as a public university, it doesn’t have the “legal right to stop demonstrations or expression that many would consider to be offensive.”
Hannah Schlacter, a UC Berkeley graduate business student and plaintiff in the lawsuit, told KPIX that the organizations filed the lawsuit because students want to see systemic change and their concerns taken seriously.
“So, systemic change would mean that on the Berkeley website when they talk about free speech, then they should identify what is antisemitism, what is Islamophobia, what are hate crimes against Jews and what are hate crimes against Muslims,” Schlacter said to CBS.