From Judge Gerald Pappert (E.D. Pa.) yesterday in EEOC v. Univ. of Pa.:
Based on public statements by the University of Pennsylvania's president and others affiliated with the school that individuals had been subject to antisemitism on Penn's campus, United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commissioner Andrea K. Lucas issued in December of 2023 a charge that Penn engaged in a pattern or practice of harassment of Jewish employees in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In July of 2025, the EEOC issued an administrative subpoena to gather evidence relevant to that charge.
The EEOC viewed this as a "garden variety" use of one of its common investigative methods, where it seeks contact information for possible victims of the employer's alleged misconduct or witnesses thereto. But unlike investigations into, for example, sexual harassment or racial discrimination, the subpoena sought information pertaining to people's faith, making its requests more intrusive and calling for greater sensitivity, something the EEOC now acknowledges.
One of those requests in particular sought, among other things, lists of school groups and organizations "related to the Jewish religion," including personal contact information for Penn employees in those groups. Though ineptly worded, the request had an understandable purpose—to obtain in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn's Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace. Penn resisted the subpoena on various grounds and when the parties could not resolve their differences, the EEOC filed this subpoena enforcement action.
Penn and other groups and associations the Court permitted to intervene significantly raised the dispute's temperature by impliedly and even expressly comparing the EEOC's efforts to protect Jewish employees from antisemitism to the Holocaust and the Nazis' compilation of "lists of Jews." Such allegations are unfortunate and inappropriate. They also obfuscate the Court's limited role and the discrete legal issues before it. And the EEOC no longer seeks any employee's specific affiliation with a particular Jewish-related organization on campus….
The EEOC's subpoena … seeks, among other things, (1) the names of employees who reported antisemitic harassment to Penn; (2) the Jewish-related organizations on campus and the private contact information (personal phone number, email address and mailing address) of the employee members in each organization; (3) the private contact information of employees in Penn's Jewish Studies Program; (4) the private contact information of employees who participated in Penn's March 2024 listening sessions on antisemitism; and (5) the private contact information of employees who received a Penn survey on antisemitism.
The court rejected (among other things) the argument that the subpoena unconstitutionally interfered with employees' privacy:
