A prominent civil rights attorney and antisemitism law expert is calling on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals to reverse a federal court ruling that dismissed civil rights claims brought by two janitors who were assaulted, barricaded, and called “Jew-lovers” by rioters who seized Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall during the April 2024 campus unrest.

Rabbi Dr. Mark Goldfeder – CEO and Director of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, Director of the Antisemitism Law Clinic at Touro Law, and a former Presidential appointee to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Council – published a sharp legal critique of the ruling in the National Review on Sunday, arguing that U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon made several fundamental errors in dismissing the Section 1985(3) claims of Mariano Torres and Lester Wilson in Torres v. Carlson.

Torres and Wilson, both janitors at Columbia, say they were surrounded by masked rioters during the Hamilton Hall takeover, punched, physically prevented from leaving the building, and called “Jew-lovers” and told they were “working for the Jews.” The two men lost their jobs as a result and remain on workers’ compensation.

Judge McMahon dismissed their civil rights claims, holding that the rioters did not conspire for the purpose of depriving anyone of their civil rights – characterizing the antisemitism as a mere “backdrop” and the violence against Torres and Wilson as a “side effect” of a political protest rather than its objective.

Goldfeder argued that the court misapplied its own legal standard. The ruling relied on Bray v. Alexandria Women’s Health Clinic, in which the Supreme Court held that anti-abortion protesters who targeted abortion clinics were not conspiring against women as a class. But Goldfeder said that logic does not apply here. Torres and Wilson were not called “Jew-lovers” by a single protester who went off-script, he wrote – they were called that by the mob attacking them, as an explanation for why they were being attacked.

“That is not a side effect,” Goldfeder wrote. “That is literally the frame through which the conspirators themselves understood the situation. The antisemitic vocabulary was the operational logic of the assault.”

Goldfeder also challenged the court’s reasoning that because the rioters planned to use force against anyone who got in their way – not only Jews or their sympathizers – the conspiracy lacked the class-based animus required under the law. He pointed to the Ku Klux Klan as a historical parallel: the Klan also killed white civil rights workers alongside Black Americans, yet no court ever held that this mixed targeting removed the discriminatory character of the enterprise.

“A mixed-target conspiracy does not become non-discriminatory simply because the conspirators are willing to harm anyone who obstructs the mission,” Goldfeder wrote. “If racial or antisemitic animus helps define that mission, identify the enemy, or justify the violence, then the statute is implicated.”

Goldfeder further argued that the court erred in holding that Torres and Wilson could not qualify as a cognizable class of “people who are or are perceived to be Jews or supporters of Jews.” Federal civil rights law across multiple statutes – including Title VII and the Americans with Disabilities Act – protects people targeted based on perceived membership in a protected class, he noted. Whatever Torres and Wilson actually believe about Jews or Zionism, their attackers decided what category they belonged to, and Section 1985(3) should not be the lone exception to that principle.

Speaking to Belaaz, Goldfeder said the case must now go to the appellate court. “Next stop should be the Second Circuit,” he said. “This was not just a protest where things got out of hand. These janitors say they were trapped, attacked, called ‘Jew-lovers,’ and told they were ‘working for the Jews.’ At some point, courts have to stop treating antisemitism as scenery and recognize it as part of the conduct. Tort law can deal with the physical injuries, lost jobs, and workers’ comp issues, but civil-rights law is supposed to deal with the very important issue of why they were targeted.”

Goldfeder acknowledged in his analysis that the state tort system can compensate Torres and Wilson for their physical injuries and lost wages – but argued that is not sufficient. “The state tort system can compensate Torres and Wilson for their injuries,” he wrote. “It cannot name what was done to them. That is what the civil rights laws are for, and the Second Circuit should have the chance to say so on appeal.”