Arizona-based Goldwater Institute has filed a friend-of-the-court brief at the U.S. Supreme Court on behalf of the four professors, all from the City University of New York. The professors are fighting their representation in a CUNY faculty/staff union that expressed anti-Israel views which the professors objected to.
The professors sued in 2021 – and have lost several court decisions since – after the union adopted a resolution condemning the “the continued subjection of Palestinians to the state-supported displacement, occupation, and use of lethal force by Israel."
City University, a public system of 25 campuses spread across New York City, employs about 30,000 faculty members.
Goldwater attorney Parker Jackson tells AFN the suing professors are self-identified Zionists, and hence supporters of the state of Israel, who are represented in labor negotiations by the union, the Professional Staff Congress.
The professors have quit the union, and no longer pay dues, but their legal argument is they don’t want to be represented by a union with anti-Israel beliefs.
"No one should have to be represented by an organization that actively advocates against their interests,” Jackson argues, “and that's exactly what's happening here under New York's labor laws.”
According to Jackson, the antisemitic atmosphere on CUNY campuses has only worsened after last year’s Oct. 7 Hamas attack and Israel’s war in Gaza.
The union representing the Jewish professors, he says, was the first public sector union to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and for an end to the war.
The professors are represented by two legal groups, National Right to Work Legal Defense and the Education Foundation and the Fairness Center, which represent union workers in union fights, according to a related Reuters story.
After the professors sued in 2021, a judge dismissed the case which was upheld by a federal appeals court upheld in March. The professors are now appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court and the amicus brief from Goldwater is part of that appeal.
