The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law said on Thursday that it and the Association of Legal Aid Attorneys had agreed to settle a lawsuit, which the center filed last year on behalf of three members of the union, and to pay the three $315,000.
The Brandeis Center alleged in July 2024 that the union retaliated against the three, who sued to block an anti-Israel resolution of the union’s, by trying to fire them.
“In a frenzy of anti-Israel fanaticism, these publicly-funded lawyers ginned each other up and engaged in clear violations of federal labor law with their desire to punish Jewish and allied members objecting to their anti-Israel advocacy,” Rory Lancman, senior counsel at the Brandeis Center, told JNS.
The settlement will “impose some adult supervision” on the union, Lancman said. He told JNS that he is “pretty confident” that the settlement is “unprecedented” and “far-reaching.”
The union, which is part of the United Auto Workers, agrees to pay $315,000 and to state publicly within 10 days about the resolution that “some of the communications from diverse perspectives were hurtful to union members and were inappropriate,” per a copy of the agreement that JNS saw.
The union also agrees to train its members about their rights under federal law and to subject all disciplinary charges to review by its outside legal counsel.
“There are a handful of unions around the country that are in the grip of this anti-Israel fanaticism,” causing “more and more Jewish members to want to leave the union or raise a religious objection to pay dues to the union,” Lancman said.
Those Jewish members “are ultimately being ostracized and cast out and denied the benefits of being union members,” he said. “This decision will give strength to Jewish union members across the country to stand up for themselves.”
