The Day the Jewish Star Shone Bright in Court

This week, a federal judge in Washington, D.C. issued a ruling that could become a watershed in the legal fight against antisemitism. In a powerful preliminary injunction, the court protected our client Kimmara Sumrall, a proud Jewish Zionist who was violently assaulted for simply wearing an Israeli flag. More than a legal win, this was also a moral victory in that the court affirmed what too many try to deny — that antisemitism is a form of racial hatred; that our laws, when applied properly, are capable of confronting it; and that attacking a Jewish person wearing a Jewish flag as a symbol of her racial heritage is not a political statement, it is a hate crime. 

Ms. Sumrall was demonstrating peacefully at the U.S. Capitol last fall when Janine Ali — a member of the extremist hate group CODEPINK — approached her, grabbed the flag Ms. Sumrall wore around her neck, and yanked hard enough to choke and disorient her. A U.S. Capitol Police officer witnessed the incident and arrested Ali on the spot.

In granting the injunction, an “extraordinary remedy granted sparingly,” the Court swiftly rejected Ali’s argument that the attack was somehow “just anti-Israel” and not antisemitic. The judge called it “quite a stretch,” noting that Ms. Sumrall was clearly targeted because of the Jewish symbol that she wore. As the court powerfully stated, “The Star of David — emblazoned upon the Israeli flag — symbolizes the Jewish race … targeting the Star of David is as racially motivated as [using] the highly offensive racial slur, [the n-word].”  

The case is noteworthy in that it utilizes a virtually forgotten provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, passed just after the Civil War to eliminate all incidents of racial violence. That rarely invoked portion reads in relevant part: “All persons within the jurisdiction of the United States shall have the same right to  …  the full and equal benefit of all laws … for the security of persons and property.” As the court explicitly recognized, Ms. Sumrall was not a representative of any government. She was just a Jewish woman wearing a universally recognized Jewish symbol, and she was entitled to her safety. The Star of David didn’t stop being a racial marker when the concentration camps were liberated. It was used then to single Jews out for persecution, and today, we wear it as a symbol of identity and resilience. Either way, its meaning hasn’t changed — it stands for the Jewish race, and those who target it do so with intent. In recognizing that simple truth, the Court cut right through the semantic games that anti-Zionist antisemites like to play when they try to deny their motivations.  

As the court explicitly recognized, Ms. Sumrall was not a representative of any government. She was just a Jewish woman wearing a universally recognized Jewish symbol, and she was entitled to her safety.

For legal scholars and civil rights advocates alike, this is important. In the post–Oct. 7 landscape, Jewish communities have faced a surge in violence and intimidation. Yet legal remedies have often been elusive — partly because Jewish identity, and the corresponding manifestations of antisemitism, are so multifaceted, incorporating aspects of race, religion, culture, national origin and ethnicity. It is too often too easy for antisemites to hide behind this ambiguity, commit horrible acts with impunity, and then claim their actions do not constitute antisemitism because the act was not based on this or that particular protected characteristic. That vagueness is at the very core of an equal protection deficit that has contributed to the increasing rates of antisemitic incidents we are seeing across the country. This ruling is a crystal-clear example of moral clarity and common sense that should be followed by other courts everywhere. 

For the record, whether Jews are or are not a scientifically separate race may be debatable, as much of modern science regards the category of race itself as a social construct. But that is a wholly different question than whether Jews experience racism and racial discrimination. Racism is the belief that innate inherited characteristics biologically determine human behavior. Racial discrimination takes place when people treat others differently because of their perception of that other person’s race, whether scientifically accurate or not. For example, whether or not Jews are scientifically a race, it is undeniably true that the Nazis killed six million Jewish men, women and children because they believed that Jews were racially inferior. As it relates to this case, as the Supreme Court held in St. Francis Coll. v. Al-Khazraji, 481 U.S. 604 (1987), “based on the history of § 1981 … Congress intended to protect from discrimination identifiable classes of persons who are subjected to intentional discrimination solely because of their ancestry or ethnic characteristics… whether or not it would be classified as racial in terms of modern scientific theory.” And, as the Court explained in its sister case Shaare Tefila Congregation v. Cobb, decided the same day, for the purposes of the 1866 law, that category includes Jewish people.

Ms. Sumrall’s case is the first we know of since Oct. 7 in which a Jewish plaintiff has used this particular civil rights provision to sue an assailant for antisemitic violence. I suspect it will not be the last. The floodgates are open, and with them, a new pathway to justice for Jews whose safety, dignity, and voice have been stifled by fear. This is not about Jewish exceptionalism it is simply about establishing equality. If grabbing a Jewish star to choke a Jewish woman isn’t antisemitism, then nothing is and no Jews are safe. Thank God for common sense principles, and for judges who can apply them.

Mark Goldfeder is CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center and a law professor at Touro University. Matthew Mainen is litigation counsel at NJAC.