Kasowitz Files Amended Lawsuit Adding Dozens of New Plaintiffs and New Allegations of Columbia’s Antisemitic Hostile Educational Environment and Egregious Civil Rights Violations
Kasowitz Benson Torres, on behalf of 47 Jewish students, Students Against Antisemitism, Inc. (SAA), and StandWithUs Center for Legal Justice (SCLJ), has filed an over 200-page amended complaint against Columbia University and Barnard College, adding 32 additional students as plaintiffs, detailing new allegations of Columbia’s egregiously antisemitic hostile educational environment and of the harassment, threats, and intimidation against Jewish and Israeli students, in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and adding new claims under the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871.
In their amended complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York on June 17, 2024, plaintiffs have added new allegations concerning Columbia’s enabling hundreds of students, faculty, and others to set up an encampment occupying Columbia’s South Lawn for weeks, where the harassment and abuse of Jewish and Israeli students only intensified, filled with calls for a global Intifada—the worldwide murder of Jews—and other antisemitic slogans and chants.
The amended complaint asserts claims for violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, New York Human Rights Law and New York City Human Rights Law, and the Ku Klux Klan Act, and seeks, among other things, injunctive relief requiring Columbia and Barnard to implement institutional, far-reaching, and concrete remedial measures.
The Kasowitz Benson Torres team representing the Columbia and Barnard students is led by partners Marc E. Kasowitz, Daniel R. Benson, Mark P. Ressler, Andrew L. Schwartz, and Joshua E. Roberts, and includes associates Jillian R. Roffer, Brittany F. Alzfan, Zachary N. Josephs, and Erin Ringel.
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