S.F. State wants anti-Semitism suit dismissed

Saying they have no power to censor campus speech, officials at San Francisco State University asked a federal judge Monday to dismiss a suit by current and former Jewish students accusing the school of fostering antiSemitism.

Lawyers for the school and the California State University Board of Trustees denied that the incidents described in the suit — disruption of a talk by the mayor of Jerusalem, exclusion of the Jewish group Hillel from a campus fair, and several past provocations including the 1994 defacement of a mural showing stars

of David — had been fostered or tolerated by SFSU officials or had interfered with anyone’s freedom of religion.

But even if religious liberties had been burdened, the lawyers said, “the source of that burden would be the actions of other students and groups at the university, who were also exercising core First Amendment rights that the university could not curtail.”

They noted that another judge threw out a similar suit against UC Berkeley in 2011.

U.S. District Judge William Orrick III will decide whether to let the suit proceed.

Filed in June by present and past students and several local residents, the suit alleged that “SFSU has fostered and sanctioned antiSemitism from the highest levels and affirmed the actions of hostile, aggressive and disruptive students to regularly violate the rights of Jewish students.”

The suit focused on an April 2016 appearance by Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat. Six minutes into his remarks, about 20 students stood and started shouting, “Free Palestine,” “Israel is an apartheid state” and other chants, according to a report commissioned by the university.

The protesters soon began using a microphone and prevented listeners from hearing most of Barkat’s speech, said the report, by an outside law firm. It concluded the protest had been disruptive and violated school policies but posed no physical threat to Barkat or others.

But the lawsuit said the protesters had threatened violence, that Jewish students felt frightened, and that school officials had contributed to the hateful atmosphere by instructing campus police to “stand down,” and later by letting the demonstrators off with a warning. The suit also accused officials of bias for moving Barkat’s speech to an off-campus location.

In Monday’s filing, however, the university said it had relocated Barkat’s speech because of concerns about student safety, not religion. And university lawyers said the protesters “were engaged in political speech and expressive conduct — core First Amendment-protected rights.”

The lawyers also said Hillel had been excluded from a campus “Know Your Rights” fair in February because the group had missed a registration deadline. The Jewish students’ lawsuit contended the deadline was fabricated.

“We stand by our claims, which outline a discriminatory environment unlawfully targeting Jewish students,” attorney Brooke Goldstein of the Lawfare Project, a pro-Israel nonprofit representing the plaintiffs, said Monday.

SFSU officials also cited a 2011 ruling by another federal judge dismissing a lawsuit by two Jewish students that accused UC Berkeley of turning a blind eye to alleged intimidation by Arab students and encouraging campus antiSemitism.

Even if the claims in that lawsuit were proved, U.S. District Judge Richard Seeborg said, the conduct mainly involved “pure political speech” that was constitutionally protected.

Seeborg, however, allowed the Berkeley students to refile their suit with narrower and more specific claims. Their lawyer, Joel Siegal, said Monday that the case was ultimately settled with bans on some types of intimidating conduct by protesters.