Judge rejects claims of S.F. State anti-Semitic bias

A lawsuit accusing San Francisco State University of allowing and encouraging anti-Semitism on campus has been dismissed by a federal judge, who said a group of Jewish students and their supporters failed to show that school officials discriminated against them because of the students’ religion or political views.

The suit, filed last year, claimed university policies were responsible for a protest that shut down a campus speech by the mayor of Jerusalem in 2016 and for excluding the Jewish group Hillel from a “Know Your Rights” student fair in 2017. The plaintiffs also said anti-Semitic name-calling, graffiti and other slurs on campus over a number of years had made Jewish students feel fearful and unwelcome; and they accused a professor of instigating protests and prejudice with anti-Zionist statements.

But U.S. District Judge William Orrick III said the Jewish students had failed to show that school officials had treated them differently than others or had taken any discriminatory actions.

“I understand that these plaintiffs, and some other members of the Jewish or Israeli community ... feel deeply that SFSU has not done enough to curtail others’ antiSemitic behaviors and to foster a better environment for Jewish and pro-Israeli students,” Orrick said in a ruling late Monday.

But even if the allegations in the suit were proven, he said, they would not show discrimination by the university, its administrators or its faculty.

“No facts have been alleged to support their mere claim of differential treatment,” Orrick said, and the university extensively investigated each of their allegations.

When Jerusalem Mayor Nir Birkat, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke at San Francisco State in April 2016, school officials moved his talk away from the center of campus after being warned of protests. Six minutes into the speech, about 20 students stood and shouted “Israel is an apartheid state,” then took a microphone and effectively silenced Birkat, according to the university’s report.

The plaintiffs accused the university of discriminating by choosing a remote location and by allegedly ordering campus police not to interfere with the protest. But Orrick said the school had a similar policy for other controversial speakers and there was no evidence that officials had interfered with Birkat or mistreated Jewish students because of their religion.

Hillel’s exclusion from the February 2017 “Know Your Rights” fair was not decided by school officials but by student organizers who said Hillel had missed a registration deadline, Orrick said. He said there was also evidence that one or more Jewish groups participated in the fair.

The judge also said allegations of anti-Semitic incidents on campus, if proven, were not enough to show a “hostile educational environment.”

The Lawfare Project, a Jewish legal organization that represents the plaintiffs, said it would appeal the ruling while proceeding with a separate suit against the university in San Francisco Superior Court, scheduled for trial in March.

“We look forward to continuing to fight for the members of the community who have suffered — and continue to suffer — at SFSU because of their Jewish or Israeli heritage,” the organization said.

The university declined to comment.

Attorney Liz Jackson of Palestine Legal, which supported Rahab Abdulhadi, the ethnic studies professor targeted in the suit, said Orrick “was right to reject Lawfare’s attempt to equate calls for justice with discrimination.” She also said the massacre of 11 Jews at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Saturday was “a brutal reminder that anti-Jewish bigotry is real and that we need to fight all forms of racism together.”