Federal judge sides AGAINST Jewish students who sued UPenn over antisemitism

A lawsuit filed against the University of Pennsylvania was dismissed by a federal judge who ruled that the Jewish students who brought the “sweeping allegations” could not prove the school intended harm.

Jewish students attending the Ivy League school alleged in the lawsuit that Penn “permitted, tolerated and/or facilitated multiple antisemitic incidents on its campus that have created a hostile educational environment for Jewish students” following the Hamas terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

But Mitchell Goldberg, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, sided against the students this week, tossing the antisemitism case, Fox News reported.

NEW: A federal judge dismissed a longstanding lawsuit by Penn students alleging the Univ. insufficiently responded to campus antisemitism.

The judge found that “no allegations” from the suit “could be interpreted as antisemitic.”https://t.co/HC0PmCnSfY

— Ethan Young (@EthanMYoung_) June 2, 2025

In his ruling, the judge claimed the 111-page amended lawsuit “sets out a wide variety of general allegations, complaints, historical and current events, and alleged antisemitic incidents that allegedly took place not just on Penn’s campus, but elsewhere in the United States and the world.”

Penn students Jordan Davis and Noah Rubin, along with Penn alumnus Eyal Yakoby, filed the lawsuit in December with the nonprofit Students Against Antisemitism, according to the Jewish News Syndicate.

A report on Yakoby and the lawsuit was featured in a CBS Philadelphia story from 2024:

(Video Credit: CBS News Philadelphia)

The federal judge this week ruled that  “many of the more than 300 paragraphs in the amended complaint contain language which is unnecessarily inflammatory and ‘impertinent,’ and immaterial allegations that have virtually nothing to do with the claims which plaintiffs are endeavoring to raise.”

“The amended complaint also includes sweeping allegations of ideological, philosophical, religious, and political concerns and grievances that have nothing to do with a federal lawsuit,” Goldberg wrote. “After review of Plaintiffs’ amended complaint, I find that it fails to sufficiently allege the facts necessary to plausibly state viable claims under Title VI, the Pennsylvania Unfair Trade Practices and Consumer Protection Law, and for breach of contract.”

“While Plaintiffs spend an inordinate amount of space expounding on long-past injustices and incidents, some dating as far back as 1993, and complaining that Penn did not take the actions or respond to their reports, letters, or emails in the manner which Plaintiffs wanted, Plaintiffs have failed to plead any facts showing either intentional discrimination or deliberate indifference on the part of Penn,” Goldberg added.

“Indeed, I could find no allegations that Penn or its administration has itself taken any actions or positions which — even when read in the most favorable light — could be interpreted as antisemitic with the intention of causing harm to the Plaintiffs,” the judge wrote. “At worst, Plaintiffs accuse Penn of tolerating and permitting the expression of viewpoints which differ from their own.”

“Although it is difficult to parse through the 312 paragraphs of allegations contained in the Amended Complaint, I find Plaintiffs have alleged various incidents where they were personally subjected to derogatory language, verbally harassed, and/or targeted because they were Jewish,” Goldberg said.

He noted that Penn submitted “documentary evidence” that they had antisemitism policies in place as well as “action plans to address and ‘combat’ antisemitism.”

“Deliberate indifference is a very high bar, and Plaintiffs’ dissatisfaction with Penn’s responses is not enough to establish there was an official decision by Penn to not remedy a Title VI violation and that this deliberate indifference effectively caused racial discrimination,” Goldberg wrote.

The students were, however, allowed to revise and refile their Title VI and breach of contract claims since they had described “various incidents where they were personally subjected to derogatory language, verbally harassed and/or targeted because they were Jewish.”

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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