Two janitors, who filed complaints against Columbia University after they were held hostage during the April 2024 occupation of Hamilton Hall, reached a settlement agreement with the private Manhattan school.
Sources close to the litigation told JNS that Mariano Torres and Lester Wilson settled for an undisclosed amount to end their complaint, which was filed to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The commission stated on Friday that a $21 million settlement was reached with various Columbia employees, “who may have experienced antisemitism on Columbia’s campus post-Oct. 7, 2023.” The janitors were not mentioned in the statement. Neither of the two is Jewish. The commission said that the settlement included charges brought on behalf of “a class of all Jewish employees.”
Sources close to the litigation told JNS that “all of the EEOC payouts were made from that $21 million bucket.”
“The Trump administration is committed to combatting antisemitism wherever it rears its head, including the workplace, and universities are workplaces too,” stated Andrea Lucas, acting commission chair. “No employee should be subjected to harassment based on their faith or Jewish identity.”
Alyza Lewin, president of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, told JNS that the center and the firm Torridon Law are representing the janitors in a separate and ongoing suit against their alleged captors. Torridon Law represented the two in the commission complaint, according to Lewin.
The Brandeis Center stated in April when the lawsuit was filed that the anti-Israel protesters who occupied Hamilton Hall “assaulted and battered” the janitors and “mocked and derided them as ‘Jew-lovers’ and ‘Zionists.’”
“The whole idea of this case was to go after and to hold accountable those organizations and individuals who were actually responsible for planning, coordinating and carrying out the takeover of Hamilton Hall and the assault of these janitors,” Lewin told JNS.
