The continued safety and security of Jews in America depends on judges like Trevor M. McFadden, a U.S. District Court judge in Washington, D.C. Earlier this week his judicial opinion in Sumrall v Ali held that Jews are a racial minority and that the Star of David on the Israeli flag is a symbol of Jewish racial heritage. 

Sumrall v Ali tells the story of two women. The plaintiff “supports Israel as an expression of her Jewish identity.” The defendant “opposes many of Israel’s policies, especially in Gaza.” The complaint relates that in November 2024 both women were at the Dirksen Senate Office Building. The plaintiff came to demonstrate for Israel, the defendant to oppose it. The plaintiff wore an Israeli flag tied around her neck like a cape. The defendant approached her from behind and yanked the flag, briefly choking and paining the plaintiff. A U.S. Capitol Police Officer witnessed the scene and promptly arrested the defendant. 

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A young Jewish man holds up an Israeli flag as campus demonstrators face off at Columbia University in New York City on Oct. 12, 2023.

These women’s paths had crossed before in approximately ten anti-Israel/pro-Israel counter demonstrations. The plaintiff had witnessed the defendant harassing and slurring Jews. She feared for her safety if she should find herself again with the defendant. Following an evidentiary hearing, McFadden issued a modest stay-away order, requiring the defendant to keep at least three yards away from the plaintiff. The defendant challenged that ruling and sought to have the entire case dismissed. McFadden’s order this week retained his stay-away order and refused to dismiss the case. His opinion is particularly significant because it refuses to accept the defendant’s argument that her conduct was “not antisemitic” because “the Israeli flag represents the state of Israel rather than the Jewish race.” The judge refused to be hoodwinked by those who seek to conceal their Jew-hatred as mere political debate.

One of the defining characteristics of modern antisemitism is the deliberate erasure of Jewish peoplehood and the denial of the Jewish people’s ancestral connection to the Land of Israel. Those who claim Israel has no right to exist routinely erase and deny Jewish history in the Land of Israel, defining Jews solely on the basis of religious belief and religious practice. According to this mischaracterization, antisemitism is very narrowly defined as hate that targets Jews because of Jewish faith or Jewish dress. But the most prevalent form of antisemitism today targets Jews on the basis of their shared ancestry and ethnicity rooted in the Land of Israel. 

When Jewish students, Jewish businesses and Jewish property are targeted because of the victim’s “Zionism” it invariably has nothing to do with the victim’s political opinion. Rather, it reflects a hostility to the very notion that Jews are a people indigenous to Judea (a part of ancient Israel). Anti-Zionist assailants target individuals who refuse to loudly and publicly condemn Israel and disavow it as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Harassing, discriminating against or assaulting Jews because they refuse to disavow their people’s history and heritage is not a political debate. It is the unlawful targeting of Jews on the basis of their Jewishness.

That distinction has legal significance. 

Civil rights laws in America have been interpreted to protect members of faith-based communities when they are targeted on the basis of their “shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics.” This is a catch-all phrase that encompasses race, color and national origin. The laws do not protect a person from a personally offensive political opinion. When Jewish “shared ancestry and ethnicity” is erased, when Jews are mischaracterized as no more than a faith and Jewish peoplehood, history and heritage is denied, Jews risk losing valuable civil rights protections. 

In Sumrall v Ali, McFadden had to decide whether 42 USC § 1981 –— a federal civil rights law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color or ethnicity –— applied. The plaintiff argued that the defendant’s conduct crossed the line from political debate into unlawful discriminatory violence when the defendant yanked the Israeli flag tied around the plaintiff’s neck. The defendant’s claim, like that of so many other anti-Zionists, was that she had nothing against Jews: she was only making a political statement about Israel, and the fact that the person wearing the Israeli flag was Jewish was irrelevant. 

But the judge saw through the ruse. He recognized that Jews are an ethnic group –— a racial minority covered by §1981 –— and that the defendant had likely intentionally targeted a Jewish person wearing a Jewish flag “as a symbol of her [Jewish] racial heritage.” He was not fazed by the dubious acquittal the defendant received from a different judge in the criminal case that followed her arrest. The judge in that case gave credence to the defendant’s Code Pink anti-Zionist supporters (who testified the defendant merely bumped into the plaintiff) and found that the “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard needed to establish a criminal conviction had not been met. If not for McFadden’s ruling in the civil lawsuit filed by the plaintiff (which is governed by a lower “more likely than not” standard), the Jewish victim would have had no legal recourse, and another antisemitic hate crime would have gone completely unaddressed. 

Kudos to Judge McFadden. As his opinion makes clear, assaulting Jews on the basis of their connection to Israel is not political debate, it is racially motivated battery. When anti-Zionists erase and deny Jewish peoplehood and Jewish history, they endanger civil rights protections for Jews in America. Judicial opinions like this one, which recognize that Jews today are targeted due to the Jewish people’s ancestral connection to Israel and that America’s civil rights laws are designed to protect Jews from such conduct, are key to keeping American Jews safe.

Alyza D. Lewin is the president of U.S. affairs for the Combat Antisemitism Movement.