US Jewish groups file federal lawsuit alleging antisemitism at Atlanta schools
Civil rights suit accuses the Fulton County district of having ‘fostered a hostile climate that has allowed antisemitism to thrive in its schools’ since Oct. 7
Three Jewish advocacy groups filed a federal complaint against the Fulton County school district in Atlanta over alleged antisemitic bullying against Jewish students since the Hamas-led October 7 attack on Israel that started the war in Gaza.
The complaint said administrators failed to take action when Jewish and Israeli students faced harassment. The school district “has fostered a hostile climate that has allowed antisemitism to thrive in its schools,” the complaint said.
In a written statement, the Fulton County district denied the allegations. “The private group’s efforts to depict Fulton County Schools as promoting or even tolerating antisemitism is false,” the statement said.
The organizations filed the complaint under Title IV of the Civil Rights Act with the US Department of Education on August 6. Title IV prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin.
The complaint follows a wave of antisemitism allegations against schools and universities across the country. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish advocacy group, filed a similar complaint in July against the Philadelphia school district, one of the country’s largest public school systems. In November, the Department of Education announced investigations into seven schools and universities over alleged antisemitism or Islamophobia since the start of the Israel-Hamas War.
Other instances detailed in the complaint involve a high school student cursing at an Israeli student in Arabic, and a middle school student telling an Israeli peer, “Somebody needs to bomb your country, and hey, somebody already did.” In the classroom, the complaint said that some of the pro-Palestinian positions teachers took were inappropriate.
Jewish parents met with Fulton County school district leaders in late October after several complaints about antisemitism and “other students cosplaying as members of Hamas,” the complaint said. Parents offered to arrange antisemitic training, among other suggested actions. The complaint says school district leadership declined to take action and ignored numerous complaints, including an email to the district’s superintendent signed by over 75 parents.
The district says it already takes complaints seriously.
“Like most, if not all, schools across the country, world events have sometimes spilled onto our campuses,” the district said in its statement. “Whenever inappropriate behavior is brought to our attention, Fulton County Schools takes it seriously, investigates, and takes appropriate action,” the statement reads.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center For Human Rights Under Law, Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education and the National Jewish Advocacy Center filed the complaint. The organizations asked the district to denounce antisemitism, discipline teachers and students for antisemitic behavior, and consider how to improve experiences for Jewish students.
Activism against Israel erupted in universities, colleges and schools when the Gaza war began with Hamas’s killing of some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and seizure of 251 hostages in the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 40,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed some 17,000 combatants in battle as of August, and another 1,000 terrorists inside Israel on October 7.
Israel’s toll in the ground offensive against Hamas in Gaza and in military operations along the border with the Strip stands at 332.
The Fulton County complaint listed verbal attacks against Jewish students since October 7, but it also described certain displays of pro-Palestinian sentiment as intimidating. The groups took issue with students wearing keffiyehs, a scarf that has become a symbol for the Palestinian movement. The complaint said that the day after the attacks by Hamas, students wearing keffiyehs shouted “Free Palestine” at Jewish students, a slogan the groups labeled “a rallying cry for the eradication of Israel.”
