The National Education Association, the largest U.S. labor union, harassed Jewish members and discriminated against them in a “sustained” manner, a complaint to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleges.
Marci Lerner Miller, director of legal investigations at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JNS that the union, which has about 3 million members, has both overlooked harassment against Jewish members in the presence of union leaders and “created a really hostile environment for Jewish members of that union and also the local and state unions in many cases.”
“Because of the NEA’s permissible discrimination, it sends the message to the local and state affiliates that antisemitism is acceptable,” she said.
The center, which is representing the Louis D. Brandeis Center Coalition to Combat Antisemitism, which is a separate entity, alleges that the union violated Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Some members of the coalition are current and former Jewish members of the union. (JNS sought comment from the NEA.)
The union considers Jews to be “white” in its use of “minority classifications to determine the percentage and numerical goals for each ‘minority’ group,” on which basis it “offers benefits and opportunities to its members,” according to the complaint.
The NEA’s “written policies required allocation of benefits, including leadership positions, mentorship, training based on racial and ethnic classifications,” Miller said.
Since the union requires in its constitution that at least 20% of its board be made up of “ethnic minorities,” white and Jewish union members have “been harmed and continue to be harmed and are denied equal access to opportunities and excluded from full participation in NEA governance,” according to the complaint.
“The policies are unlawful on their face, and it’s easier to see the connection between the NEA and its discriminatory policies and the environment that Jews are facing in the NEA,” Miller told JNS. “They’re excluded from the top down.”
The complaint alleges that Jewish members of the union experienced “severe harassment and intimidation” during a union assembly last summer, during which union leaders were present. Jewish members also faced “open hostility” and “physical intimidation” as the union weighed a proposal to boycott the Anti-Defamation League, Miller said.
“Delegates that were aligned with anti-Israel advocacy groups physically positioned themselves near the caucus members, so they didn’t feel comfortable speaking,” she said, of the union’s Jewish caucus.
“They shouted them down. They stood so close to them that they felt unable to move and trapped to the point where security eventually got involved and broke that up,” she told JNS. “But it made Jewish delegates feel very uncomfortable and made a lot of them relocate to different areas.”
According to the complaint, participants in the union assembly laughed and clapped when a Jewish delegate from Colorado referred to a Holocaust survivor killed in an antisemitic firebombing in Boulder last year.
“This was all in the presence of the leadership, including the president,” Miller told JNS. “They didn’t do anything, and they didn’t discipline anyone after the fact, even though I know there were complaints.”
The complaint also alleges that the union handbook referred to the Holocaust as “generalized tragedy affecting more than 12 million victims,” without specifying that the Nazis targeted Jews. The union changed the language without apologizing, according to the complaint.
The union labeled the entirety of Israel as “Palestine” on a map it emailed to members in October about “celebrating indigenous lands.” It also linked materials “associated with organizations that have expressed support for Hamas’s attacks” on Oct. 7, per the complaint.
Miller told JNS that “again, there was public backlash, and again the NEA removed this resource and issued a statement simply that the resource didn’t meet its standards, but it didn’t advise anyone to stop using it or publish a substitute, and the damage has already been done.”
She added that the center may sue the union. “We’ll see what kind of changes can be made in the EEOC context,” she said.
The center hopes that the complaint will result in “some accountability on behalf of the NEA and changes made to the policies and changes made to behavior,” Miller told JNS.
“This is really an important case, because what we’re seeing in schools and what we’re seeing on college campuses, we’re finding oftentimes starts long before anybody arrives on college campuses,” she said. “They’re being taught this in K-12 schools, and a lot of it is starting from teacher unions, and we really want some accountability for that.”
