From Kopmar v. Ass'n of Legal Aid Attorneys, decided Tuesday by Judge Paul Oetken (S.D.N.Y.) (though see also another post this morning allowing a different part of the claim to go forward):
Plaintiffs, who are public interest lawyers in the greater New York City area, … Plaintiffs allege that their local chapter of the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys ("ALAA"), unlawfully retaliated against Plaintiffs for suing in New York state court to prevent the ALAA from promulgating a resolution that Plaintiffs viewed as antisemitic {and that] Plaintiffs characterize as "an 1,147-word diatribe against Israel"}…. Plaintiffs have not stated retaliation claims under Title VII, the NYSHRL, or the NYCHRL, because their state-court lawsuit did not oppose any discrimination made unlawful by those statutes….
At no point did Plaintiffs argue that the Resolution had only been adopted because the ALAA discounted or repressed the views of its Jewish members, in fact almost exclusively using the word Jewish when referring to Plaintiffs' clients who might be offended by the Resolution, and to Jewish colleagues with whom Plaintiffs' professional reputations might suffer. Reviewing these allegations, the Court sees nothing alleging differential treatment of Plaintiffs because they are Jewish, or based on any other protected status….
Moreover, because the ALAA's Resolution was political speech on a matter of public concern, this case is "rife with First Amendment overtones." Cf. Gartenberg v. Cooper Union (S.D.N.Y. 2025) (cleaned up). While it is true that "invidious private discrimination … has never been accorded affirmative constitutional protections," Title VII, like the NYSHRL and NYCHRL, nonetheless must respect "the fundamental principle that governments have 'no power to restrict expression because of its message, its ideas, its subject matter, or its content.'" When speech involves matters of "public concern"—as the current debates about Israel and Palestine surely do—it is "entitled to 'special protection' under the First Amendment" and generally "cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt." …
