PHILADELPHIA — Today, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, Democracy Defenders Fund, and Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin and Schiller filed a motion to intervene in EEOC v. The University of Pennsylvania on behalf of five organizations affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania. The groups petitioning the court to join the proceedings represent Jewish faculty and student employees who oppose the non-consensual release of organizational membership rosters and members’ personal information based on the First Amendment right to associate confidentially, which directly impacts the freedoms of speech, association, privacy, and religious liberty.

At a press conference hosted by the ACLU-PA this morning, attorneys and impacted Jewish faculty explained the threatening nature of the subpoena and the ramifications that could result if the EEOC’s demands were met, essentially allowing the creation of a centralized registry of UPenn’s Jewish students, faculty, and staff.

“To put things bluntly, I don’t want my employer handing over information about my religious identity without my consent, and I see it as a violation of the First Amendment for the government to be forcing the university to do so. The government cannot guarantee that the information it accumulates about Jews won’t fall into the wrong hands,” said Steven Phillip Weitzman, professor of Hebrew and Semitic Languages and Literatures at UPenn.

"It doesn't matter what the stated intent is. The moment our government begins compiling lists of people based on their religion or ethnicity—especially when those groups have historically faced persecution and worse—we cross a dangerous line,” said Witold Walczak, legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania. ”These types of registries don't remain benign; they create a user-friendly tool for discrimination, and history shows us that actors with malicious goals can easily weaponize them."

"The EEOC subpoena represents a distressing threat to our Jewish members because of its demand for personally identifying information based only on Jewish involvement,” said Mitch Marcus, president of Penn Association of Senior and Emeritus Faculty. “For our retired and senior faculty born in the years following the Holocaust, the thought of having their names turned over to the government because they are Jews brings back the nightmare experiences of our parents and grandparents."

“Like all Americans, Jewish students, faculty and staff at the University of Pennsylvania have First Amendment rights to freely associate in celebration of their Jewishness and to practice their religion without any interference from the government. We believe that compelled disclosure of protected personal information will chill these sacred freedoms, both on Penn’s campus and in the larger Jewish community,” explained Matthew A. Hamermesh, attorney at Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller.

"This is an atrocious abuse of government power. Under the thinnest and most questionable pretense, this administration is attempting to force the disclosure of Jewish groups’ membership rosters,” said Amb. Norm Eisen (ret), executive chair of Democracy Defenders Fund. “Such conduct drags us back to one of the darkest chapters in our history. The Supreme Court rejected this kind of compelled identification decades ago for a reason: it chills free expression, endangers religious liberty, and weaponizes the law against marginalized communities. We should be moving forward in protecting civil rights, not turning back the clock.”

The lawsuit filed on July 23, 2025, was brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), which issued a subpoena to the Trustees of the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) demanding that UPenn create and turn over membership rosters for the Jewish Studies Program and Jewish and Jewish-affiliated campus organizations, plus personal contact information and addresses of the Jewish members. On November 18, after UPenn refused to turn over the requested information, the EEOC sued UPenn, asking a judge to enforce the subpoena.

The motion to intervene can be found HERE

More information can be found at aclupa.org/EEOC_Penn.

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