BUZZ
Key Takeaways
- A federal judge ruled that the University of Pennsylvania must provide the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) with a list of employees affiliated with Jewish groups, including names and contact information, to investigate allegations of discrimination.
- Penn plans to appeal the ruling, arguing that it raises serious privacy and First Amendment concerns, and maintains that such lists do not align with its practice of not cataloging employees by religion.
- The judge rejected Penn's constitutional claims against the subpoena and criticized comparisons made by Penn regarding the EEOC's efforts to protect Jewish employees as inappropriate.
- The American Association of University Professors at Penn expressed disappointment over the court order, citing concerns about the privacy and safety of Jewish community members and the implications for academic freedom.
Penn plans to appeal decision, citing privacy concerns
The University of Pennsylvania must provide the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission a list of employees who belong to Jewish groups, including their names and contact information, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.
The decision comes after Penn resisted a 2025 subpoena stemming from a charge that the university engaged in repeated harassment of Jewish employees, as detailed in Judge Gerald Pappert’s memorandum.
Penn has rejected the discrimination charge and claims that the EEOC’s subpoena is unconstitutional.
“But the charge is valid and the constitutional claims are easily dispensed with,” Judge Pappert ruled.
He granted the EEOC’s application to enforce the subpoena and ordered the university to produce the requested information, but with one limitation. The school is not required to disclose any employee’s affiliation with a specific organization.
Judge Pappert determined that employees’ contact information and home addresses are not constitutionally protected “highly personal” information.
He also noted that “Penn and other groups” have explicitly compared “the EEOC’s efforts to protect Jewish employees from antisemitism to the Holocaust and the Nazis’ compilation of ‘lists of Jews.’”
He criticized this comparison as “unfortunate and inappropriate.”
“They also obfuscate the Court’s limited role and the discrete legal issues before it,” he wrote.
A Penn spokesperson told Inside Higher Ed that the school will appeal the decision.
“While we acknowledge the important role of the EEOC to investigate discrimination, we also have an obligation to protect the rights of our employees,” the spokesperson said.
“We continue to believe that requiring Penn to create lists of Jewish faculty and staff, and to provide personal contact information, raises serious privacy and First Amendment concerns. The University does not maintain employee lists by religion,” he said.
Penn’s American Association of University Professors chapter is disappointed by the court order, said Lorena Grundy, the chapter’s vice president.
“This threatens the privacy, safety, academic freedom, and freedom of association of our Jewish community members, and by extension every other group,” she told Inside Higher Ed.
“We are actively exploring the possibility of an appeal, and we will continue to fight to defend the rights of faculty, staff, and students to work and learn without fear of surveillance or targeting,” she said.
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