Judge denies attempt to block Jewish students’ lawsuit over violent campus protest

A US district court judge in New York has denied Cooper Union’s attempt to dismiss a lawsuit brought by 10 Jewish students, who allege “a hostile educational environment on the basis of their national origin”.

John Cronan, a judge on the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, also ordered the lower Manhattan private college to file an answer to the complaint by Febuary 26.

In a 56-page opinion, Cronan stated that the Jewish students presented “sufficient facts to establish an actionably hostile educational environment based on instances of harassment that are not constitutionally protected.”

The plaintiffs allege “plausibly” that “Jewish students at Cooper Union were subject to antisemitic abuse that was both severe and pervasive based on facts properly considered under Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act] and the First Amendment,” the judge stated.

On October 25, 2023, a little more than two weeks after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks on the Jewish State, anti-Israel protesters screamed “free Palestine” and pounded on a door at a Cooper Union library, as Jewish students, including two wearing kippahs, hid within.

The private university blamed the Jewish students for gathering “in a prominent place in the library where they could be seen by the demonstrators” and for refusing a recommendation to hide “in the windowless upstairs portion of the library out of the demonstrators’ sight,” said the judge.

Cooper Union also faulted them for not escaping “the library through the back exit,” he added.

“These events took place in 2023 – not 1943 – and Title VI places responsibility on colleges and universities to protect their Jewish students from harassment, not on those students to hide themselves away in a proverbial attic or attempt to escape from a place they have a right to be,” the judge said.

In sum, the physically threatening or humiliating conduct that the complaint alleges Jewish students in the library experienced is “entirely outside the ambit of the free speech clause” and “was objectively severe,” the judge wrote.

“The court is dismayed by Cooper Union’s suggestion that the Jewish students should have hidden upstairs or left the building, or that locking the library doors was enough to discharge its obligations under Title VI,” the judge added.

“The judge was not impressed at Cooper Union’s ‘why couldn’t the Jews just hide in the attic?’ argument,” wrote Jason Bedrick, a Heritage Foundation research fellow, following the decision.

“The audacity of a university to tell Jewish kids to pound sand as they indulge Islamists and their soft terror tactics on campus,” wrote Marina Medvin, a criminal defense lawyer in Arlington, Virginia. “The judge who got the case was appalled.”

StopAntisemitism called on Cooper Union “to expel the students responsible for trapping Jewish peers in the library.”

“In addition, if they are foreign nationals, we call on the Trump administration to revoke all visas and deport them,” the group stated. “We applaud Judge John Cronan’s application of common sense and American values in his strong ruling against Cooper Union.”