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A federal judge ordered the University of Pennsylvania to turn over records about Jewish employees to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as part of an investigation into alleged antisemitic discrimination, according to court proceedings reported by the Associated Press. The ruling from U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert said Penn does not have to reveal any worker’s affiliation with a specific group, and it set a deadline of May 1 to comply. The judge also said employees can refuse to take part in the EEOC inquiry, while directing that the agency still needs the chance to talk to people directly to determine whether they have evidence of discrimination.
Pappert mostly upheld an administrative subpoena in the case, limiting what Penn must provide as the EEOC pursues whether the workplace environment was hostile, the AP reported. The judge wrote that Penn’s main concern was linking employees to Jewish groups, and he noted that the EEOC no longer sought any employee’s specific affiliation with a particular Jewish-related organization on campus. He also said Penn and other parties that opposed the subpoena raised the dispute’s tone by comparing the EEOC’s efforts to protect Jewish employees to the Holocaust and Nazi “lists of Jews,” calling that framing “unfortunate and inappropriate.”
Penn said it plans to appeal. In an emailed response, a university spokesperson said Penn is committed to confronting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and said it has “taken multiple steps to prevent and address these despicable events,” the AP reported. The spokesperson added that requiring Penn to create lists of Jewish faculty and staff and provide personal contact information raises privacy and First Amendment concerns, and the statement said the university “does not maintain employee lists by religion.”
Pappert’s order preserves some privacy limits while allowing the EEOC to attempt witness outreach. The judge exempted information about three Jewish organizations from the subpoena, the AP reported: MEOR, Penn Hillel, and Chabad Lubavitch House. The AP reported that executive directors for all three organizations said in court filings they were legally and financially separate from the university.
Chabad Lubavitch House’s executive director, Rabbi Menachem Schmidt, described privacy as essential to the group’s operations. In a January declaration cited by the AP, Schmidt said, “The privacy of persons making use of Chabad at Penn’s services and facilities is vital to Chabad at Penn’s operations,” and added that “Chabad at Penn is accordingly concerned about the impact that non-consensual disclosure of personal information could have on its mission and activities.”
The EEOC investigation was prompted, in part, by incidents involving Jewish students and campus facilities, the AP reported. Those included someone shouting antisemitic obscenities and destroying property at a Jewish student life center, a Nazi swastika painted on an academic building, and what the AP described as “hateful graffiti” left outside a fraternity. The investigation has also focused on actions related to protests over the war in Gaza, and Penn’s response to those and other incidents.
The EEOC argued in court filings that Penn’s “workplace is replete with antisemitism,” the AP reported. It also told the judge that investigators believe the identification of those who witnessed and/or were subjected to the environment is essential to determining whether the work environment was both objectively and subjectively hostile. A former federal official told the AP on condition of anonymity that it is not unusual for investigators looking into employment discrimination to request identities of employees of a particular religion to facilitate outreach to people who may have been victims.
A similar issue was also before the court earlier, with a judge set to decide whether Penn must produce records in the antisemitism probe, MSI previously reported. On Tuesday, the court moved that dispute forward by directing Penn to comply with the subpoena as limited by Pappert’s specific exemptions and privacy protections, with compliance due by May 1.