Current Cases

In the five years since it was filed, Bronner v. American Studies Association, District of Columbia Superior Court, No. 2019 CA 001712 B, for which Deborah Project lawyers are lead counsel, has yielded crucial insight into how anti-Israel activists conducted a hostile takeover of an American academic society to advance their own political goal of boycotting the Jewish state.  In the documentary record produced in discovery — substantive depositions have not yet begun — Deborah Project lawyers have amassed a record showing that the defendants explicitly chose to conceal their political agenda from Association members when running for positions of power in  the organization; took hundreds of thousands of dollars from the ASA’s modest endowment to finance their political goals; manipulated the vote on adoption of a BDS resolution, to make it appear that it had passed when it had actually failed, and explicitly stated that they would pursue their anti-Israel boycott even if it hurt the Association itself (as hundreds of respected university presidents and other academics said it would, and as the ASA’s records show it has).  

On May 12, 2022, The Deborah Project filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles.

Concerned Jewish Parents and Teachers of Los Angeles, et al, v. Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, et al., 2:22-CV-03243-FMO-PVC, C.D. Cal.   Our case seeks to stop the use of profoundly antisemitic/anti-Zionist teaching materials from being used in the Los Angeles public-school system, and to enforce California law requiring that all public school teaching materials be made public.

Currently the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium is peddling to different school districts across California, including the one in Los Angeles, the same hateful material that was rejected by the people and government of California prior to the passage of A.B. 101, the California law mandating an ethnic studies course for graduation from high school. Not only are the school districts themselves being approached, but LESMCC is providing training to pre-k to high school educators so that they will incorporate the hateful material in their classrooms. For a copy of the Complaint, please contact us.

- We are currently representing both undergraduates and college professors who have encountered antisemitism in the form of anti-Zionism on their campuses and/or within their departments' academic associations. A first step on behalf of some professors will be published and will appear here soon.

• - The Deborah Project was asked to write an amicus brief for a case against a New Jersey school board for permitting school board members to attack the Jewish State at the conclusion of a school board meeting. Schwartz v. Abedrabbo, Awwad, Clifton Board of Education and Passaic County, in New Jersey Superior Court. In our amicus brief we assert that the School Ethics Commission violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution,  as well as the N.J. Constitution because it rejected the initial complaint against two school board members who viciously denounced Israel for protecting itself from Hamas terrorism, and they did so at the end of a school board meeting. The Ethics Commission claimed there was no violation because "no school board action was taken as a result of those members' statements."  But the Ethics Commission, just a year earlier, had found that a different school board member had committed an ethics violation when he posted harsh criticism of two Muslim members of Congress on his personal Facebook page. In that case, no school board action was taken and the Facebook post was not a government site, nor could he be construed as acting in his official capacity

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WESTFIELD, NJ MOM CHARGES SCHOOL BOARD OFFICER’S PUBLIC BIAS AGAINST JEWS VIOLATES STATE AND LOCAL LAWS

A Westfield New Jersey mother has filed a Complaint with the New Jersey School Ethics Commission to enforce her Jewish family’s right to unbiased behavior by a local education official.  Drafted with assistance from The Deborah Project, a public interest law firm representing victims of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in education, Stephanie Siegel’s pleading explains that, in a public manifesto and on social media, Westfield Board of Education Vice President Sahar Aziz has 

· Publicly committed herself to ensuring that all educational activities in which she participates will advance the belief that the State of Israel “enshrines” the concept of “the racial supremacy of Jewish Zionist nationals;”

· Used Nazi ideology to claim that Jews who support the State of Israel believe themselves to be a “master race;”

· Publicly claimed that Jewish people have no historical connection to the land of Israel, and that their presence there is an exercise in “settlor colonialism.”

These statements grossly violate the New Jersey mandate that school district officials avoid issuing statements which have “the potential to discourage members of the Public” from “engag[ing] with the Board given what may seem to be an apparent bias.”  The Complaint also alleges that Aziz has refused to include in her public statements the disclaimer required by Westfield School Board members according to the lawyer for that governmental body, that the views expressed are her own and not those of the public school board on which she sits.

For thousands of years the Jewish commitment to the return of the Jewish people to Zion has filled Jewish scripture, Jewish law and Jewish custom.  For that reason, the United States Department of Education Office  of Civil Rights has recently reaffirmed the common-sense principle that attacks on those who support Zionism and the state of Israel, simply because they hold such beliefs, can constitute discrimination against Jews on the basis of their common ancestry.

New Jersey law mandates that, as a public official, Dr. Aziz’s right to express her own opinions must be exercised in a manner that avoids actual bias against any group – especially those with whom she disagrees – and also requires that she avoid creating the danger that she will appear biased against those whose religious commitments she clearly abhors.  The Complaint filed by the Deborah Project on behalf of Ms. Siegel asks the New Jersey School Ethics Commission to enforce these principles of basic fairness on behalf of Jewish residents of Westfield just as they have already been enforced to protect other minority groups.

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Parent files complaint against New Jersey education board official’s anti-Israel screeds