Penn must turn over Jewish employee records to EEOC, judge rules

Dive Brief:

A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Pennsylvania to turn over the personal contact information of employees affiliated with Jewish groups and organizations to the Trump administration as part of a federal antisemitism investigation.
In July, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoenaed the Ivy League institution for the information in order to investigate allegations of discrimination against Jewish employees at the university. 
U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert, an Obama appointee, said Penn must supply the federal agency with the requested data with two exceptions — it needn’t reveal any employee’s ties to a specific Jewish-related organization nor turn over information about three of the university’s Jewish centers. Penn has until May 1 to comply.

Dive Insight:

The EEOC is seeking wide swaths of employee information from Penn, requests that the university has largely fought against.

In addition to information about employee members of campus Jewish groups, the federal agency has demanded the names of Penn employees who filed antisemitism complaints and the university’s responses to those complaints.

It further requested the names and contact information of every Penn employee who:

Works in its Jewish Studies Program.
Completed an anonymous survey conducted by the university’s antisemitism task force.
Participated in the task force’s anonymous listening sessions.

The EEOC is also seeking each individual’s responses to the survey and notes taken during the listening sessions.

Penn employees and legal scholars quickly expressed dismay and concern over Tuesday’s ruling.

“The historical dangers of compiling lists based on religious affiliation are well documented, and we remain steadfast in our commitment to protecting our clients’ constitutional rights,” Vic Walczak, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, told The Daily Pennsylvanian, the university’s independent student newspaper.

A Penn spokesperson told the newspaper that the university intends to appeal the judge’s ruling. 

In January, the university rebuffed many of those requests but said it had turned over almost 900 pages of information to the EEOC, including antisemitism complaints filed by employees. However, Penn refused to produce lists of employees that would “reveal their Jewish faith or ancestry” or their participation in Jewish organizations.

In lieu of turning over worker contact information, Penn offered to notify its employees that the EEOC wished to speak with them about any antisemitism they experienced and provide the agency’s direct contact information.

The EEOC refused, telling the courts that Penn’s proposal was akin to the university injecting “itself as a filter between Penn employees and the EEOC.”

Pappert said in his Tuesday ruling that Penn must comply with almost all of the federal agency’s requests.

He called the EEOC’s original request for the contact information of Penn employees in Jewish groups “ineptly worded.” But he added that it had “an understandable purpose” — to obtain individuals’ contacts “in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees.”

The EEOC is no longer seeking “any employee’s specific affiliation with a particular Jewish-related organization on campus,” Pappert said. Instead, the agency will receive employees’ information without knowing which group they are members of.

The EEOC opened similar investigations into the California State University system and Columbia University and has directly contacted employees of both institutions. 

Columbia ultimately settled with the EEOC for $21 million. Cal State officials settled a lawsuit filed by employee unions over the system’s disclosure of workers’ personal information. Under the agreement, Cal State must give employees notice before sharing such information with the EEOC for its antisemitism probe.

The EEOC has also publicly encouraged employees who have experienced antisemitism on college campuses to file discrimination charges with the agency. Some groups have accused the Trump administration of using investigations into antisemitism to penalize higher education institutions that don’t align with its policy goals.