From Lax v. CUNY, decided in 2024 by N.Y. trial court judge Gina Abadi, and just affirmed Wednesday in a short opinion by the N.Y. intermediate appellate court:
Plaintiffs are observant Jewish professors at Kingsborough Community College (Kingsborough), which is part of CUNY [City University of New York]. Defendant Professional Staff Congress (the Union) is the labor union for the faculty. Defendant the New Caucus of the Professional Staff Congress (New Caucus) is a political party of the Union. [Defendants] Wetzel and Perea were professors at Kingsborough and members of the New Caucus.
On February 26, 2021, plaintiffs filed this action alleging … hostile work environment discrimination on the basis of religion[,] … retaliation [for making discrimination complaints], … [and] assault and false imprisonment.
Plaintiffs allege that they and other observant Jewish faculty and staff members at Kingsborough have faced pervasive, anti-religious discrimination from a particular segment of fellow faculty members who are the leaders of a faculty group called the Progressive Faculty Caucus of Kingsborough Community College (PFC) and are also members of the New Caucus. Plaintiffs claim that the New Caucus members collaborated with the PFC members to dominate campus elections and call for the removal of observant Jewish faculty members, administrators, department chairs, and others at Kingsborough. Plaintiffs allege that Wetzel and Perea actually participated in, and aided and abetted, the conduct giving rise to their discrimination and retaliation claims.
Plaintiffs assert, among numerous alleged acts of discriminatory conduct, that the PFC denied entry to every observant Jewish applicant, including Lax; that the PFC and the New Caucus members lobbied against Lax and other observant Jewish candidates running in campus elections; that the PFC members called for the removal of observant Jewish faculty members, including Lax; that the PFC and the New Caucus members wrote in a communist newspaper regarding their "struggle" against a "network of Zionists" among the faculty at Kingsborough, and made similar comments in a publicly distributed campus survey; that there were discussions between Wetzel and others that observant Jews were undesirable for PFC membership; that Perea engaged in a malicious and relentless campaign to get Goldstein fired because he was a Zionist; that an internal PFC email mentioned the need to "bring violence to the Zionists on campus"; that anti-Semitic flyers were distributed on the Kingsborough campus; that a portrait of Goldstein's father was defaced; that nails were found in the tires of cars belonging to Lax and Goldstein; and that the PFC members called for plaintiffs' removal from their jobs at Kingsborough.
[Defendants] Wetzel … and Perea[ cross-claimed, arguing, among other things,] that CUNY is a government entity directly subject to the First Amendment … and that, in addition, CUNY has promised to protect their academic freedom and freedom of speech in assertions made in its contract with them, in its faculty handbook, on its website, and elsewhere, on which they relied to their detriment. [Their cross-claim] further alleges that Wetzel and Perea have used their academic freedom and First Amendment rights to utter progressive political views and criticism of [plaintiff] Goldstein, which plaintiffs claimed were anti-Semitic. It also alleges that Wetzel and Perea's political criticism of Israel is not anti-Semitic, and that the complaint's specific assertions against them regarding their alleged actions of anti-Semitism are frivolous.
In addition, Wetzel and Perea's second cross-claim alleges that plaintiffs have complained to CUNY about them using available processes and procedures, such as making administrative complaints of discrimination, asserting that they were a danger or security risk to plaintiffs and the CUNY community, and stating that they breached other CUNY codes and rules. It asserts that plaintiffs' intentions that motivated all of their initiatives against Wetzel and Perea are to punish them and retaliate for their politically progressive views and criticism of Goldstein. It alleges that "CUNY has permitted and facilitated such retaliation by its failure to supervise [p]laintiffs and to protect [their] academic freedom."
Wetzel and Perea, in this cross-claim, state that for example, when plaintiffs filed United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaints implicating them in organizing an anti-discrimination event for a Friday night (the Friday Night Event), with the purpose of excluding Sabbath-observant Jewish members, CUNY failed to give them notice that these EEOC complaints had been filed. Wetzel and Perea state, upon information and belief, that CUNY also failed assertively to protect their interests and academic freedom at the EEOC. They allege that plaintiffs' retaliatory measures were carried out with CUNY's complicity and have succeeded in shutting down their free speech and academic freedom, since for example, the Friday Night Event was cancelled….
