Kasowitz Files Lawsuit against University of Pennsylvania on behalf of Jewish Students Alleging Egregious Civil Rights Violations for its Antisemitic Hostile Educational Environment

Kasowitz Benson Torres, on behalf of two Jewish students, has filed a groundbreaking lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania against the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), alleging that Penn has egregiously violated the civil rights of the two Jewish students, who have faced pervasive acts of antisemitic hatred, discrimination, harassment, and intimidation while attending Penn.

In their complaint, the students allege that Penn has transformed itself into an incubation lab for virulent anti-Jewish hatred, harassment, and discrimination; has enforced Penn’s own rules of conduct selectively to avoid protecting Jewish students from hatred and harassment; has hired rabidly antisemitic professors who call for anti-Jewish violence and spread terrorist propaganda; and has ignored Jewish students’ pleas for protection. 

The complaint also alleges that Penn—in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964— has failed to remedy the hostile environment on its campus, where plaintiffs and their Jewish peers are routinely subjected to vile and threatening antisemitic slurs and chants.  Plaintiffs and other Jewish students must traverse classrooms, dormitories, and buildings vandalized with antisemitic graffiti.  

The students are requesting that the Court order Penn to: implement institutional, far-reaching, and concrete remedial measures, including by terminating Penn faculty and students responsible for such abuse, and require Penn to pay damages, including tuition refunds, to the two Jewish plaintiffs, among other remedies.

The Kasowitz Benson Torres team representing the University of Pennsylvania students is led by partners Marc E. Kasowitz, Daniel R. Benson, Mark P. Ressler and Andrew L. Schwartz, and includes associates Joshua E. Roberts, Jillian R. Roffer, Andrew C. Bernstein and William Wolfe Taub.

Read the complaint here.