Lawsuit Against Penn For Allowing ‘Free Palestine’ slogans and Protests Against Israel’s Genocide Must be Dismissed

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Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights file a brief as amicus curiae in a Third Circuit Court of Appeals case brought by Israel lobby group

Thursday, March 5th — Palestine Legal and the Center for Constitutional Rights today announced the filing of a “friend of the court” brief in support of the University of Pennsylvania in a lawsuit claiming that Penn violated civil rights laws by not doing enough to stop speech critical of Israel on campus.

Filed in November 2023, the lawsuit, Eyal Yakoby et al vs. The Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania, is one of many legal complaints filed by Israel lobby groups since October 2023 that attempt to misuse Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to suppress speech critical of Israel on college campuses. This strategy has been detailed in a new report by the American Association of University Professors and Middle Eastern Studies Association.

In June 2025, U.S. District Judge Mitchell Goldberg granted a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, finding “no allegations” that Penn took any actions which could “be interpreted as antisemitic with the intention of causing harm to the Plaintiffs.” In August 2025, the Plaintiffs filed an appeal.

Our amicus brief filed in December urges the Court to affirm the District Court’s decision and to make clear that the vast majority of the alleged incidents mentioned in the lawsuit and appeal do not implicate Title VI because they are political speech on a matter of public concern and do not target any student on the basis of a protected identity. Title VI does not and cannot require universities to punish and suppress protected political speech, including criticism of Israel, merely because some members of a group feel offended by that speech. The alleged incidents mentioned by the Plaintiffs include students chanting common pro-Palestinian slogans (e.g. "From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free"), a sit-in and study-in drawing attention to Israel's genocide against Palestinians, and other expressions of solidarity with Palestinians' struggle for life and freedom, including the Palestine Writes Literature Festival.

Our brief also argues that the Court should reject the use of the contested IHRA definition of antisemitism to determine whether an environment is hostile for Jewish students. The IHRA definition, promoted by right-wing Israel lobby groups, including StandWithUs, one of the plaintiffs that brought the case, conflates virtually all criticism of Israel's human rights violations with antisemitism. If Penn were to adopt IHRA and the other measures Plaintiffs demand to censor Palestinian students and their supporters, it would not only run afoul of the First Amendment, but would also risk violating the Title VI rights of Palestinian students on campus by discriminating against them.

“The speech at issue targets a state over its actions and is clearly protected under the First Amendment,” said Radhika Sainath, Litigation Director at Palestine Legal. “Particularly as we are seeing suppression of speech critical of our government nationwide, it is more important than ever that the integrity of that right be reaffirmed.”

Read our full amicus brief here.