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Federal Court Orders U.S. Jews to Pay Antisemites' Court Costs due to "Vexatious" and"Frivolous" Claims

(Tablet) Nathan Lewin - In September 2003, a cadre of antisemites devised an ingenious style of harassing Jews who came on Saturday mornings to worship at Ann Arbor's Beth Israel Synagogue. They gathered only at the hours of Sabbath services on the sidewalk in front of the synagogue and brandished signs with mottoes like "Resist Jewish Power," "Stop Funding Israel," and "End the Palestinian Holocaust." Civil libertarian synagogue members opined that this was only free speech and that the harassment would have to be tolerated. So the synagogue never went to court. After many years, two of the congregation's members, represented by a volunteer attorney, filed a lawsuit requesting that the protest be moved at least 1,000 feet from the synagogue. The federal trial judge assigned the case dismissed it. The congregants' lawyer appealed this decision to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, whose chief judge, Jeffrey Sutton, rejected the legal claim and directed that the complaint be dismissed. Although I was supremely confident that no fair and impartial federal court would ever penalize an individual congregant for seeking a court order that signs accusing Jews of corruption and committing a holocaust be distanced from once-a-week synagogue attendees, the trial judge directed payment of the defendants' enormous attorneys' fees - $158,721.75. On appeal, Judge Sutton approved the penalty, finding that the congregants' federal complaint was "vexatious" and "frivolous." I filed a brief supporting the request that the Supreme Court review the extraordinary assessment of attorneys' fees, writing: "Jewish Americans are living in perilous times. They must turn to the courts to respond to unprecedented antisemitism." The Supreme Court denied the petition on Oct. 2, 2023, just days before the Hamas massacre. The writer is a Washington, D.C., lawyer with a Supreme Court practice who has also taught at Harvard, Georgetown, Columbia, and University of Chicago law schools.
2024-07-04 00:00:00
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