The University of Pennsylvania stated in a district court filing on Tuesday that the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s demand to hand over personal information of the university’s Jewish employees as part of the EEOC’s Jew-hatred investigation is “extraordinary and unconstitutional.”
In November, the agency accused the university of obstructing its investigation of the university’s handling of antisemitism among its employees. The EEOC stated at the time that the university refused its request to identify the victims and witnesses of alleged antisemitic incidents. It sought a subpoena to obtain that information.
Penn’s 28-page filing in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania opposing enforcement of the subpoena, a copy of which was obtained by JNS, states that the university has cooperated with the agency for more than two years. Its only cause of contention, per the filing, is “the EEOC’s extraordinary and unconstitutional demand” for personal information on the university’s Jewish employees.
This demand includes the university providing a list of the names of Jewish employees and their “personal home addresses, phone numbers and emails,” as well as any affiliations they may have with Jewish entities and their involvement in the Jewish community, the filing stated. (JNS sought comment from the EEOC.)
“The EEOC insists that Penn produce this information without the consent—and indeed, over the objections—of the employees impacted while entirely disregarding the frightening and well-documented history of governmental entities that undertook efforts to identify and assemble information regarding persons of Jewish ancestry,” the filing states. “The government’s demand implicates Penn’s substantial interest in protecting its employees’ privacy, safety and First Amendment rights.”
It added that the agency’s demand is “entirely unnecessary” since the university has offered to inform its employees that the agency wants to hear about experiences related to antisemitism and that the agency has not identified “a single allegedly unlawful employment practice or incident involving employees.”
The filing further stated that if the requested personal information became publicly disclosed, the people identified “could face real risk of antisemitic harm” and that “there is no statutory or regulatory guarantee that information obtained during an investigation will never be publicly disclosed by the agency.”
