US judge says Trump administration can demand list of Jews at Penn for antisemitism probe

Ruling finds that the federal government’s request for the information, which the university and Jewish groups at the school denounced, is normal for discrimination investigations

By Luke Tress

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1 April 2026, 5:28 am

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Luke Tress is The Times of Israel's New York correspondent.

University of Pennsylvania signage is seen in Philadelphia, May 15, 2019. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke, File)

A US federal judge ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration can legally demand that the University of Pennsylvania turn over information about Jews on the campus as part of an antisemitism probe.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission began investigating the university in December 2023 for allegedly allowing discrimination against Jewish employees.

The federal agency asked the university for the contact information of Jewish staffers and the university refused to comply, court filings said.

Jewish groups at the university also pushed back against the demand, despite the investigation’s stated goal of combating antisemitism.

“Across history, the compelled cataloging of Jews has been a source of profound danger, and the collection of Jews’ private information carries echoes of the very patterns that made Jewish communities vulnerable for centuries,” Jewish campus groups said in a statement last year.

The federal commission sued Penn’s trustees last year, claiming that the university had refused to comply with the subpoena, leading to a legal battle.

Judge Gerald J. Pappert of Philadelphia’s Federal District Court issued a 32-page ruling on Tuesday in favor of the Trump administration’s claim that the request is normal for discrimination probes.

“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,’” Pappert wrote. “Such allegations are unfortunate and inappropriate.”

Anti-Israel protesters and Philadelphia police have a standoff along 34th Street at the University of Pennsylvania on May 17, 2024. (Charles Fox/The Philadelphia Inquirer via AP)

While Pappert wrote that Penn does not have to provide information to the EEOC about which Jewish organization each individual is affiliated with, he ordered that the school comply with the EEOC’s subpoena by May 1.

“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,” Pappert wrote.

The University of Pennsylvania and the leadership of the campus’s Chabad, Hillel and MEOR chapters did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since returning to office last year, US President Donald Trump’s administration has cracked down on alleged antisemitism on campuses, particularly at elite universities like Penn. It moved to ramp up its efforts, filing separate federal discrimination lawsuits in recent weeks against Harvard University and the University of California, Los Angeles.

While Jewish students have reported widespread discrimination on campuses since the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the administration’s aggressive approach has alarmed many Jews, who worry that the tactics erode civil protections in the US that have helped Jews and other minorities.

JTA contributed to this report.