Hangley Aronchick shareholder Matthew Hamermesh, associate Eitan Kagedan and shareholder Mark Aronchick have filed a motion to intervene on behalf of a collection of national and University of Pennsylvania campus organizations seeking to challenge an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoena that would effectively require the university to create and turn over a centralized registry of Jewish students, faculty and staff, along with personal contact information for all individuals identified.
As explained in the filing, the EEOC’s request is a “profoundly invasive and dangerous demand,” which violates the First Amendment rights of association, religion, speech and privacy of the proposed intervenors, including the national and Penn chapters of the American Association of University Professors, the Jewish Law Students Association of the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School the Penn Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty and the American Academy of Jewish Research.
As noted in the motion, the EEOC’s demanded compelled disclosure would be experienced as a “visceral threat to the safety of those who would find themselves so identified because compiling and turning over to the government ‘lists of Jews’ conjures a terrifying history,” while the enforcement of the subpoena would chill the interest of Jewish community members in joining and participating in these organizations for years to come.
The EEOC has requested the information as part of its purported investigation into allegations of antisemitism on Penn’s campus. The university has refused to comply with the demand, leading to the enforcement action currently pending in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania.
Hangley Aronchick is acting as co-counsel on behalf of the proposed intervenors along with the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania and the Democracy Defenders Fund.
The filing is covered in Reuters, The Guardian and The Daily Pennsylvanian. Learn more about the case on the ACLU’s website, and read the full motion to intervene here.
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