Courts Risk Creating an ‘Anti-Zionist Exception’ to Civil Rights

A forthcoming Cardozo Law Review essay argues that courts risk treating anti-Zionist rhetoric as automatically unrelated to anti-Jewish discrimination. The authors focus on a dismissed suit by two Columbia University janitors who alleged that masked anti-Israel rioters assaulted and detained them while calling them “Jew-lover,” “Jew-worker” and “Zionists.”

• Professors Jon Michaels and Matthew Segal argue that existing civil-rights law is sufficient to protect Jewish plaintiffs and people perceived as Jewish allies.
• The underlying case, Torres v. Carlson, arose from the April 2024 takeover of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall.
• A federal judge dismissed the claims in part because anti-Zionism could not establish anti-Jewish discrimination; the case is on appeal to the Second Circuit.

If anti-Zionist labeling is treated as legally distinct from anti-Jewish animus regardless of context, hostile actors gain a pathway to target Jews and their allies while evading established discrimination standards. The Second Circuit appeal will test whether courts evaluate motive from the alleged facts or immunize conduct through political terminology.

The University of Washington postponed a Sept. 9 regents vote on Student Conduct Code revisions prompted by criticism of its response to campus antisemitism and anti-Israel disruption. The delay extends review of rules addressing disruption, noncompliance and unauthorized access after a 2025 building occupation caused an estimated $1 million in damage.

• The Faculty Senate now has until Dec. 10 to submit feedback on the proposed revisions.
• Prosecutors charged 33 people with first-degree criminal trespass after the May 2025 engineering-building occupation.
• University President Robert Jones said revised changes will return to the Board of Regents after additional faculty, student and staff review.

The delay shows how post-incident discipline reforms can lose momentum inside shared-governance processes even after severe disruption and documented property damage. The decisive measure will be whether the final code preserves enforceable rules against occupation and obstruction.

A California court found sufficient evidence to try Paul Dean Andrews, 43, over alleged antisemitic calls threatening a shooting at a Jewish community center in Redondo Beach. Andrews pleaded not guilty and is being held on $275,000 bail.

• Prosecutors allege Andrews threatened to “open fire” at a center where he said he knew children were present.
• The defendant faces more than nine years in prison if convicted on all charges.
• The district attorney said Andrews previously failed to complete an anti-bias program ordered in an earlier firearms case.

The case links explicit anti-Jewish incitement to a concrete threat against a local communal institution and children. Its progression to trial is an immediate test of whether threat enforcement can intervene before rhetoric becomes violence.

The Conference of European Rabbis unveiled a seven-point manifesto urging governments to move beyond guarding Jewish sites and disrupt the networks, funding and incitement driving antisemitic violence. The Brussels initiative identifies extremist organizations, foreign financing, radical institutions and online platforms as parts of an “infrastructure of hatred.”

• The plan calls for stronger oversight of religious institutions and action against clerics who incite hatred or glorify terrorism.
• It urges authorities to expose and block extremist foreign funding and increase platform accountability for incitement.
• The manifesto cites both IRGC-linked threats and far-right extremism as drivers of danger to European Jews.

The manifesto shifts the policy frame from absorbing the cost of attacks to dismantling the institutions that generate them. Adoption would make funding transparency and radicalization controls measurable tests of European governments’ commitment to Jewish security.