Press Release: NJAC Sues New York City and its Health Department for Barring a Jewish Employee Group and Investigating Its Leaders
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
November 11, 2026
CONTACT:
National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC)
Phone: (332) 278-1100
Email: press@njaclaw.org
NJAC SUES NEW YORK CITY AND ITS HEALTH DEPARTMENT FOR BARRING A JEWISH EMPLOYEE GROUP AND INVESTIGATING ITS LEADERS
Seven health department employees say the agency recognizes six identity-based employee groups but told them Jews do not qualify
NEW YORK — The National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) sued the City of New York, its Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), and the agency’s equal employment opportunity director on November 10, 2026, on behalf of seven DOHMH employees who allege the agency twice refused to recognize a Jewish employee group, then opened a retaliatory investigation of the group’s leaders after they mourned Jews murdered at a Chanukah gathering.
DOHMH runs an Employee Resource Group (ERG) program that gives recognized groups an agency e-mail account, a SharePoint page, a place on the agency calendar, and a $5,000 annual budget. The complaint alleges the agency rejected HINENU: The Jewish ERG, on the stated ground that Jewish identity is “religious” and that “ERG identity cannot be based on religious groups.” But HINENU’s charter described a group organized around Jewish peoplehood, ancestry, and culture that would not engage in religious worship, religious instruction, or political advocacy. Of the six ERGs DOHMH has recognized, the complaint alleges, one is defined by the shared ancestry of the “indigenous peoples of Southwest Asia and North Africa” and spans multiple religious identities by its own charter’s account. In this denial, the agency acted on the antisemitic trope that denies the existence of Am Yisrael – the People of Israel – an essential element of Jewish identity, which persists regardless of religious observance.
Days after two gunmen murdered Jews gathered for a Chanukah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, the complaint alleges, HINENU e-mailed roughly eighty-five employees a message mourning the victims and convened an online support space for grieving Jewish staff. The agency’s EEO director ordered the group to “desist” from using its e-mail account. The EEO director later opened a nearly four-month unfounded investigation of eight HINENU leaders for “racial and religious discrimination,” in which investigators questioned them about their beliefs concerning Zionism and Israel. That investigation was based on statements made about and during the session held to mourn the Bondi Beach attack and address resulting Jewish grief and fear. DOHMH closed the case in June 2026 stating it was “unable to make findings.” Sixteen days later, the same EEO official denied HINENU’s ERG application in a single sentence, citing only HINENU’s alleged religious nature.
The complaint situates those decisions in what it alleges is a workplace environment hostile to Jews since October 7, 2023, sustained through official agency channels — including a deputy commissioner’s division-wide message on the “settler colonial establishment of Israel,” a recorded agency training in which a participant described the October 7 massacre as “armed resistance” without recorded objection, and an agency-sponsored lecture at DOHMH headquarters consisting of allegations against Israelis and the State of Israel. The lecture was organized by DOHMH’s purported “Global Oppression Working Group,” which an agency official hosting the event told more than 100 attendees was “developed in response to the ongoing genocide in Palestine.” That same agency official was later the lead complainant in the EEO investigation targeting the plaintiffs.
The complaint also alleges that the Health Department’s actions reflect a general City policy of hostility to Jewish peoplehood, demonstrated by Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s relentless attacks on the State of Israel, the only foreign nation that is the focus of hostility by the City’s chief executive. Israel is the only nation-state of the Jewish people, where approximately one-half of the world’s Jews live.
Filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, Cohen v. City of New York, No. 1:26-cv-09883, brings claims under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U.S.C. the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws, the First and Fourteenth Amendments. The plaintiffs ask the court to order DOHMH to recognize HINENU on the same terms as every other ERG, to expunge the EEO investigation from their records, and to award compensatory and punitive damages. NJAC attorney Alan H. Scheiner represents the plaintiffs.
Alan Scheiner, Senior Litigation Counsel at NJAC, said: “The Jewish people should enjoy the same support and the same rights that are afforded by the law and the City to other ethnic and cultural groups. Here, a City agency has denied Jewish employees access to the same resources as other identity groups, and made its offices an unwelcome environment for any Jews who adhere to a fundamental element of their identity, which is the profound connection between members of the Jewish people and the people and state of Israel.”
Mark Goldfeder, CEO of NJAC, explained that: “The City told its Jewish employees that every identity counts except theirs, then investigated them for grieving. City Hall can hold whatever opinions it likes about the Jewish state; it cannot make hostility to the Jewish people a condition of working for New York.”
The National Jewish Advocacy Center is a nonprofit organization that harnesses the power of the legal system to advocate for and protect Jewish civil rights using creative, innovative strategies.
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