Since 2003, the federal government's official view has been that Jews are protected from racial (but not religious) discrimination by educational institutions under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. This protection underlies dozens of lawsuits and administrative actions taken by or on behalf of Jewish students, especially since the Hamas atrocities of October 7 unleashed a wave of campus antisemitism.
However, there is a dearth of caselaw on the issue of whether Jews are in fact protected. Title VI intentionally excluded religious discrimination from its purview; if Jews are seen as entirely a religious group, rather than an ethnic group, the case for protection under Title VI becomes weak. And while the Supreme Court has held that Jews are protected as a "race" under the 1866 Civil Rights Act, that decision was based on the Court's understanding of what groups were considered "races" in 1866. By contrast, in 1964 Jews were mostly considered to be a religious minority, not a racial or even an ethnic one.
In a recent article, Professors Benjamin Eidelson and Deborah Hellman discuss the question of whether Jewish ethnicity provides a proper hook for protection from racial discrimination under Title VI. Eidelson and Hellman seem ambivalent on the matter, but ultimately conclude that courts are likely to hold that Jews are indeed protected.
