Updated on: March 31, 2026 / 6:16 PM EDT — AP
A federal judge on Tuesday ordered the University of Pennsylvania to provide records identifying Jewish employees to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as part of an investigation into antisemitic discrimination, but he said the university need not disclose any individual’s affiliation with a specific group.
U.S. District Judge Gerald Pappert said employees may refuse to speak with EEOC investigators, but the agency “needs the opportunity to talk to them directly to learn if they have evidence of discrimination.” He largely enforced an administrative subpoena while carving out protections: Penn does not have to reveal any worker’s specific affiliation with a Jewish-related organization, and the judge exempted three Jewish-affiliated groups from the subpoena. He set a May 1 deadline for compliance.
A university spokesperson, in an emailed statement, said Penn is committed to confronting antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and has “taken multiple steps to prevent and address these despicable events.” The school said it plans to appeal and reiterated concerns about privacy and First Amendment rights, adding that it “does not maintain employee lists by religion.”
It is common, a former federal official said, for investigators in employment-discrimination probes to seek identities of employees of a particular religion to facilitate outreach to potential victims.
Pappert criticized comparisons made by Penn and others opposing the subpoena that likened the EEOC’s efforts to compile lists of Jewish employees to the Holocaust and Nazi practices, calling those comparisons “unfortunate and inappropriate.” He wrote that the challengers were mainly concerned about linking employees to Jewish groups and noted the EEOC has dropped any request for specific affiliations with particular campus Jewish organizations.
The judge exempted information about MEOR, Penn Hillel and Chabad Lubavitch House after executive directors of those groups filed declarations asserting they are legally and financially separate from the university. Rabbi Menachem Schmidt of Chabad said in court filings that the privacy of people who use Chabad’s services is vital to its operations and that non-consensual disclosure could harm its mission.
The EEOC’s inquiry was prompted in part by a series of incidents on and around campus, including shouted antisemitic obscenities and damage at a Jewish student life center, a Nazi swastika painted on an academic building and hateful graffiti outside a fraternity. The agency has also examined actions tied to protests over the war in Gaza and Penn’s responses.
In a November filing, the EEOC said Penn’s “workplace is replete with antisemitism” and told the judge that identifying those who witnessed or were subjected to the environment is essential to determine whether the workplace was objectively and subjectively hostile.