Merrick Garland Won’t Enforce Civil Rights Laws

The October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack on Israel was the opening round of what has turned out to be a global campaign targeting Jews. The battlefield for Hamas may be in Gaza but the battlefields for Hamas’ supporters and affiliates are university campuses and urban areas in the United States, with Jewish Americans across the country being targeted for violence and deprivations of rights.

Since October 7 the United States has seen rioting and attacks that go from assaulting the White House and Congress to hunting down Jewish Americans on campuses to prevent them from speaking, organizing and associating, to murdering those engaging in peaceful protest in support of Israel.

This is a coordinated campaign, led by university student groups that operate under the misleading name of “Students for Justice in Palestine” (SJP). Rather than seeking justice, they are bringing terror from a foreign conflict onto American streets and campuses, stating “[w]e as Palestinian students in exile are PART of this movement [Hamas], not in solidarity with this movement” and are specifically targeting anyone who they believe is Jewish.

SJP has targeted Jewish synagogues, business such as bagel shops that are facially connected to the Jewish people and individuals donning traditionally Jewish religious garb, all seeking to harass, intimidate and silence voices that are supportive of Israel or Jews.

The objectives of SJP’s campaign include preventing American Jews from exercising their First Amendment rights as well as their rights to participate in federally funded programs such as public education. Their tactics include brandishing weapons on campuses, physically attacking Jews and using large crowds to physically prevent Jews from attending classes or using campus facilities.

We, as a country, have seen hate like this before.

In the wake of the abolition of slavery, many individuals, often affiliating with local and state government actors, engaged in the same type of persecution of emancipated black Americans to prevent them for truly being free and participating as equals in society.  Specific federal laws, including what is currently codified at 18 U.S.C.§§ 241, 242 and 245 (the “Deprivation of Rights Laws”), were enacted to combat the public/private campaign against reconstruction and freedom.

While the Deprivation of Rights Laws were originally enacted to confront organized campaigns by hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan, by their terms they apply to any campaign to deprive individuals and groups of federally protected rights.

The laws were successful and are still being enforced today to address a wide range of harmful activities, from promoting hate to interfering with elections.

For example, on January 30, 2024, the Department of Justice announced the successful prosecution of individuals blocking access to abortion clinics.  That prosecution included charges against protesters who prevented individuals from using the services of the abortion clinic in violation of Section 241 of the Deprivation of Rights Laws.  Since then, many other abortion clinic protesters have also been sentenced to jail time under the Deprivation of Rights Laws.

What SJP and its affiliates are doing in a widespread manner across the country is the organized deprivation of rights of Jewish Americans. The rule of law requires the Department of Justice to apply the Deprivation of Rights Laws against SJP in the same way it recently applied the laws against those depriving Americans of access to abortion clinics and historically has applied the laws against the Ku Klux Klan and other organized hate groups.

By their terms, as they have been enforced over the decades, the Deprivation of Rights Laws specifically apply to the SJP campaign against American Jews.

Indeed, in a recent Times of Israel blog post, Professor David E. Bernstein noted that the Deprivation of Rights Laws apply to campus riots and asked why the United States Department of Justice is not enforcing the laws.

Not since the Holocaust have Jews faced the type of systemic, organized attacks as they are now facing from SJP and its affiliates.  SJP is engaging in the antithesis of peaceful protest and they are targeting one of the nation’s most vulnerable constituencies.

The organization that I co-founded, Zachor Legal Institute, has now sent three separate criminal prosecution requests to the Department of Justice this year.  The first request related to antisemitic acts by SJP and affiliates at the University of California and was supported by 28 other civil rights groups.  The second request was in support of a private lawsuit against Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the plaintiffs included the civil analog to the Deprivation of Rights laws and the third request, made with our partners at StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice, was in support of a private lawsuit against Columbia University, also where the plaintiffs included a civil Deprivation of Rights claim

While the Department of Justice has refused to comment on our requests or, as far as we can tell, take any action to enforce the Deprivation of Rights Laws against Hamas-supporting campus groups, we were heartened to hear that a group of members of Congress, led by Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, recently sent a request to Attorney General Garland, asking that the Department of Justice promptly enforce the Deprivation of Rights Laws against SJP.

Students have recently returned to university campuses across the country and there have been numerous reports that SJP and affiliated groups intend to escalate their attacks on Jewish students.  Moreover, just as Black Lives Matter and Antifa mobs created mass civil unrest leading up to the 2020 elections, SJP and affiliated groups intend to do the same in advance of November’s election to intimidate those who support Israel and Jews.

The calls for enforcement of the Deprivation of Rights Laws against campus hate groups now resonate from coast to coast as well as from the halls of Congress.

SJP and its affiliates are the modern Klan, only they wear keffiyehs rather than hoods and target Jews and, indeed, America, rather than just Black Americans. Before more blood is shed and rights are further deprived, we, along with members of Congress, once again call upon the Department of Justice to end its politicized selective enforcement of civil rights laws and take action to restore security and justice on campuses.