The National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC) has filed a lawsuit on behalf of seven municipal health employees against New York City, its Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), and the agency’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) director, alleging that the agency refused to recognize a Jewish employee group twice and subsequently subjected its leaders to a retaliatory investigation.
According to the lawsuit, the DOHMH operates an Employee Resource Group (ERG) program that provides approved groups with official recognition, an agency email account, a SharePoint page, calendar access, and an annual budget of $5,000.
However, the agency refused to recognize a Jewish employee group named Hinenu in July 2025 and then in July 2026, claiming that Jewish identity is religious and that employee resource groups cannot be based on religious groups.
The plaintiffs stated that Hinenu’s charter explicitly defines the group around Jewish peoplehood, ancestry, and culture, noting it does not engage in religious worship, instruction, or political advocacy.
'Unable to make findings'
Following the murder of Jewish people gathered for a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney in December 2025, Hinenu emailed approximately 85 employees to mourn the victims and held an online support space for grieving Jewish staff members.
Following this, the EEO’s director ordered the group to desist from using its email account before opening an investigation into eight of the Hinenu leaders for alleged racial and religious discrimination, in which investigators questioned them about their beliefs regarding Zionism and Israel in April.
DOHMH closed the investigation in June, stating it was “unable to make findings,” and 16 days later, the same EEO director denied Hinenu’s application in a single sentence citing only its alleged religious nature.
The lawsuit claims that this was an act of hostility that occurred within a broader workplace environment at DOHMH shaped by official messaging and programming regarding Israel since October 2023.
According to the complaint, this included division-wide communications from leadership discussing the establishment of Israel, recorded agency trainings referencing the October 7 massacre as “armed resistance,” and an agency-sponsored workshop organized by an internal working group.
Hosts described that workshop as developed in response to “the ongoing conflict in Palestine.”
Taken together, this illustrates what plaintiffs described as a systemic double standard in how agency resources and policies were enforced.
Filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, the lawsuit brings claims under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the New York State and New York City Human Rights Laws, and the First and Fourteenth Amendments, seeking recognition for Hinenu, the expungement of records, and compensatory and punitive damages.
Alan Scheiner, a 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,” he continued, “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.”
NJAC CEO claims NYC doesn't accept Jewish identity
Mark Goldfeder, a chief executive officer of NJAC, said, “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,” he stressed.
Steven Phillips, the executive director of JewishERGs, a global network connecting Jewish employee resource groups across over 250 workplaces in nine countries worldwide, told The Jerusalem Post, “People assume the problem is what employers don’t know about Jewish identity.”
“In my experience, it’s what they think they know. HR teams, diversity leads, and often the legal advisers they turn to are all confident that being Jewish is simply a religion,” he said.
“What it means to be Jewish is for Jewish people to define. Whether an employer can set that aside and substitute its own definition is now a question for the court, and we will be watching closely. We hear this story from Jewish employees again and again, and it reaches far beyond New York,” Phillips said.
Malka Shaw, a licensed psychotherapist, trauma specialist, and founder of the Kesher Shalom Projects, told the Post, “Some of the deepest injuries come from institutions that quietly redefine who you are – not from overt hatred.”
“We are best described as a peoplehood,” she said. “When an employer decides Jewish identity counts only as a religion, while groups built on other shared ancestries are welcomed, it is overriding how a community defines itself.”
“In the trainings I give for clinicians and organizations, I describe this as ‘identity destabilization’: a process of narrative distortion and defamation that reshapes how others perceive Jews and takes a serious toll on the people being targeted,” Shaw noted.
“It isn’t necessarily trauma, but it creates a heavy, sustained stress, and it is corrosive to the culture and climate of the whole workplace. People become guarded, they pull back from colleagues, and they start to wonder whether they really belong. The sequence described in this complaint makes it worse,” Shaw said.
She pointed out that “employees who reached out to mourn the victims of a terror attack were, according to the complaint, soon under investigation for discrimination themselves.”
“When people who are grieving get recast as the ones causing harm, that message stays with them long after any case is closed. The fix isn’t complicated: let Jewish employees define their own identity, and apply the same standard you apply to everyone else.
“Most EEO and DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion] staff have never been given the psychological literacy to understand Jewish identity, recognize how antisemitic narratives spread, and know how to identify and repair the harm before it reaches a courtroom. Until they are, this will keep happening,” Shaw told the Post.