Fiss v. California College of the Arts

San Francisco Federal Court

date case opened

6 June 2024

up and coming deadlines

CCA Reply in Support of the Motion to Dismiss – November 19, 2024

about case

Karen Fiss, a highly credentialed art historian, has sued California College of the Arts—the college where she is a tenured professor—for its maintenance of an antisemitic hostile environment, under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In her case filed in federal court in San Francisco, Fiss alleges that at CCA, public expression of the Jewish commitment to Israel is met with disciplinary sanctions, while public calls for the death of Israeli Jews is publicly lauded by department chairs, professors, administrators and students, and officially defended as an exercise of academic freedom.

Motion to Dismiss and its Opposition are fully briefed. Oral argument scheduled for January 9, 2025.

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Please fill out the form, providing a brief description of the incident.

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If you or someone you know has experienced antisemitism in education, we encourage you to share your story with The Deborah Project so that we can provide advice about whether the legal rights of Jews have been violated and if so, what options there are for moving forward.

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FAQs

We’re here to help. Check out some of our most frequently asked questions. And if you don’t find what you’re looking for, be sure to contact someone from our team.

Is antisemitism in school settings illegal?

Acts of Antisemitism can be the basis of a legal violation, so long as those acts create an interference with the ability to do one's job or to participate in one's educational experience.

Don't teachers have free speech rights, so they can't be punished for saying antisemitic things?

K-12 public school teachers do NOT have free speech rights in the classroom or whenever they are performing their official duties. Private school teachers have greater leeway, as do college professors.

Do anti-Zionist/anti-Israel assertions constitute a violation of anti-discrimination laws?

It depends. The U.S. government has slowly begun to recognize that anti-Zionism can constitute antisemitism, and so is subject to anti-discrimination laws, when such hostility goes beyond merely criticizing the Israeli government for various policies but instead attacks Zionists or Israelis for things the speaker doesn't criticize other countries for doing. This is why it is so important for institutions and governments to adopt the IHRA working definition of antisemitism and its examples.

Discrimination in education is governed by Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But Title VI doesn't include religion as a protected category. So is antisemitism not considered discriminatory under Title VI?

Someone who is Jewish and believes that Israel has the right to exist as a Jewish state may have a claim under Title VI under the protected categories of Shared Ancestry and Ethnicity.

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