A member of the Washington State Human Rights Commission is undermining the reputation of the state agency with his antisemitic comments, Regina Sassoon Friedland, executive director of the American Jewish Committee in Seattle, told JNS.
Luc fils Jasmin, a pastor in Spokane and member of the state panel, accused Jews of complaining too much about antisemitism on March 27, 2025. The commission posted video footage of those remarks on June 10.
As commissioners debated a proposed resolution condemning Jew-hatred, Jasmin, whose term on the commission ends in June 2028, questioned why the commission was considering the measure.
“This word ‘antisemitism’ has been around since the Jews got trampled by Hitler, and it seems like the Jewish people keep on crying and crying and crying and crying—always crying over the antisemitism,” Jasmin, a Haitian-American, said at the meeting.
“Today, there are many other groups who are subject to mistreatment or even subject to mistreatment by the Jewish, and they’re not crying so much,” he said. “Why is antisemitism carrying on until the century 2000, and everybody’s folding down to that?”
“Wherever I’ve been throughout my life, it’s Jewish always crying, and now they’re trying to get the Human Rights Commission to write special conditions for them,” he said. “We are under duress.”
Friedland, of the AJC, told JNS that Jasmin is not the first member of the commission to make discriminatory statements against Jews.
“No community should be told that concerns about discrimination are simply ‘crying’ too much about it,” she said. “We would rightly condemn such remarks if directed at any other minority group, and we should do the same here.”
“Human rights commissioners hold positions of public trust,” she told JNS. “Communities must be confident that when they report discrimination, they will be heard, not mocked or stereotyped.”
Friedland added that “comments suggesting that Jews are merely complaining about antisemitism undermine that trust and raise serious questions about the commission’s ability to serve all Washingtonians fairly.”
“You don’t combat prejudice by dismissing it,” she told JNS.
JNS sought comment from Nick Brown, the Washington state attorney general, which runs the state’s hate crime hotline pilot program.
“State law makes the Human Rights Commission our client. As such, we are not able to provide public comments about this discussion,” Mike Faulk, deputy communications director for the state attorney general’s office, told JNS.
“More broadly, however, the public’s concerns about rising antisemitism are well-founded,” Faulk said. “Antisemitism is a real and growing threat. The attorney general’s office takes antisemitism concerns seriously, monitors hate crimes and bias incidents statewide and is focused on enforcing the state’s anti-discrimination laws.”
The Washington state legislature created the commission, which enforces the state’s anti-discrimination laws, in 1949.
On April 17, 2025, the commission adopted a resolution unanimously condemning antisemitism and defining it as discrimination against Jews. It also stated that “criticism of Israeli policies, opposition to Zionism or advocacy for Palestinian human rights do not inherently constitute antisemitism.”
At the March 2025 meeting, Han Tran, a member of the commission who also serves on the Northshore School District Board of Directors and has a history of anti-Israel social media activity, pushed back Jasmin’s characterization.
“We’re not under duress or anything like that,” she said.
Tran said that she consulted with “local Jewish scholars to provide input on how they frame antisemitism” and said that commissioners wanted to ensure they understood “what antisemitism really means.”
Jasmin, who was appointed by then-Washington Gov. Jay Inslee in June 2023, responded that he wanted a separate resolution for “these people the Jewish are killing by the millions over there—the Palestinians and the Arabs.”
Han, whose commission term ends on June 17, said that the panel previously adopted a resolution condemning anti-Arab discrimination.
“The Arabs was really being attacked and that was the right resolution, but the Jewish are attacking people and that’s different,” Jasmin said.
Tran said that Jasmin’s comments show why it’s important to define “antisemitism.”
“People need to understand that it is the Israeli government that is attacking,” she said. “I think it would be false to say that Jewish people are attacking.”
Jeff Sbaih, an attorney who was then chair of the commission and whose term ended in June 2025, said that antisemitism “has never gone away” and warned that anti-Jewish hatred was increasing.
“It’s getting worse,” he said at the meeting. “We are entrusted with enforcing the discrimination law, to investigate the discrimination and to root it out.”
Luc Jasmin III, the commissioner’s son, is running for the Washington state legislature. His campaign manager, Fiona Whitver, sent a statement to local media on Thursday.
“The Jewish community has always had our back and fought for the liberation and civil rights of our black community,” he stated. “I do not support any war, and I do not support the targeting of any group, including our Jewish community.”
“I hope people will have grace and not judge me based on the words or views of others, even if they are part of my family,” the candidate stated.
The Northwest office of StandWithUs asked supporters to contact the governor’s office.
“Gov. Bob Ferguson appoints WSHRC commissioners, and he can remove them for cause,” the group stated. “We call on commissioner Luc Jasmin to resign his role and for the governor to remove him if he will not.” (JNS sought comment from the commission and from the governor.)
“Anybody who purports to represent the cause of human rights while ridiculing a group of people that has endured some of the worst human rights abuses is unfit for service and must immediately resign,” StandWithUs stated.
