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Civil Procedure

Court Strikes Allegations About Israeli History from Lawsuit Alleging Anti-Semitism at CUNY

"Requiring Defendant to either admit or deny allegations regarding historical events that took place in 136 C.E. would serve no purpose."

|The Volokh Conspiracy |


From today's decision by Judge Jeannette Vargas (S.D.N.Y.) in Goldstein v. CUNY:

On January 9, 2026, Plaintiff Avraham Goldstein ("Plaintiff") filed his Third Amended Complaint in this action. Plaintiff alleges that he is employed as an assistant professor at City University of New York, Borough of Manhattan Community College.  He is an Israeli citizen, an Orthodox Jew, and a Zionist. Plaintiff alleges that he was the subject of discrimination and retaliation after he complained about a program on campus called the "Palestinian Solidarity Series." Plaintiff asserts claims for religious and national origin discrimination and retaliation under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, New York State Human Rights Law ("NYSHRL"), New York City Human Rights Law ("NYCHRL"), and New York Civil Rights Law ("NYCRL"), as well as claims under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violation of his rights to due process and equal protection.

Defendant Nadia A. Saleh ("Defendant") brings this motion to strike Paragraphs 34 through 46 of the Third Amended Complaint. These paragraphs purport to outline the historical origins of the current state of Israel, beginning in Biblical times, then outlining events that took place during the Roman empire through the present day. For the following reasons, Defendant's Motion to Strike is GRANTED.

Pursuant to Rule 12(f), a court "may strike from a pleading … any redundant, immaterial, impertinent, or scandalous matter." … "'Immaterial' matter is that which has no essential or important relationship to the claim for relief, and 'impertinent' material consists of statements that do not pertain to, and are not necessary to resolve, the disputed issues." To prevail on a Rule 12(f) motion, the movant must show "(1) no evidence in support of the allegations would be admissible; (2) that the allegations have no bearing on the issues in the case; and (3) that to permit the allegations to stand would result in prejudice to the movant."

Although motions to strike are disfavored, Defendant has met the high bar required for such a motion in this case. Evidence regarding the history of the Jewish state, including events that occurred several thousand years ago, have no bearing on whether Plaintiff was subject to discrimination or retaliation on the basis of his nationality or religion. Requiring Defendant to either admit or deny allegations regarding historical events that took place in 136 C.E. would serve no purpose. Moreover, to the extent certain of these paragraphs set forth controverted and charged contentions regarding the creation of separate Israeli and Palestinian states in the Middle East, requiring Defendant to respond to those immaterial allegations would be prejudicial.

Here are the struck allegations:

  1. The Jewish people originated in the Middle East and established their homeland in what is termed in the Bible as the Land of Israel, where for over 1,400 years they lived either as a sovereign nation, in the united kingdoms of Israel and Judah (hence the term, "Jew") or, at times, a nation under occupation by foreign empires. The City of Jerusalem, also called "Zion" in the Bible, was its capital.
  2. In approximately 70 C.E., the Roman empire conquered the Jewish nation, destroyed the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, and enslaved large numbers of Jews from the Land of Israel and transported them all over the Roman Empire.
  3. In 136 C.E., the Roman empire defeated the final Jewish rebellion and exiled almost all of the remaining Jews from the Land of Israel, where they lived in Diaspora as stateless and often persecuted refugees, forcibly evicted from country to country, earning the moniker, "the wandering Jew".
  4. The Roman conquerors, in an attempt to wipe out the memory of Jewish sovereignty, renamed Israel and Judah "Palestine."
  5. The Land of Israel continued to be governed by foreign empires, most recently by the Ottoman Empire based in Turkey beginning in approximately the 16th Century.
  6. While a minority of Jews remained in the Land of Israel across the millennia even after the Roman exile, with the rise of national political self-determination across the world in the 1800's, Jews began returning from the Diaspora around the world to the Land of Israel in increasing numbers, purchasing or renting land subject to the Turkish Ottoman empire, with the hope of someday re-gaining Jewish political self-determination, commonly called Zionism.
  7. In 1918, Turkey was defeated in World War I after allying itself with Germany, and Britain was given a mandate to govern Palestine, the site of the biblical Land of Israel. During this time, Jews continued returning to the Land of Israel, purchasing or renting land and housing.
  8. By the 1940's, Jews were the majority population in a significant portion of the Land of Israel.
  9. In 1947, the United Nations ("UN") General Assembly voted to end the British Mandate by partitioning Palestine, the site of the biblical Land of Israel, into two states: a re-establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in that portion of the Land of Israel in which the Jewish population was the majority, and the establishment, for the first time in history, of an independent Arab state in the portion of the Land of Israel where the Arab population was the majority ("United Nations partition plan"). This is despite that fact that no independent Arab state ever existed within Biblical Israel until that time, as Arab settlement in Israel took place exclusively when the land was under occupation by foreign powers.
  10. The Jewish leadership in the Land of Israel accepted the United Nations partition plan, and on May 14, 1948, declared the establishment of the Jewish State of Israel in the portion of the land allotted to it by the UN resolution.
  11. Arab leadership rejected the United Nations partition plan, rejected Jewish self-determination, declared war, and vowed to drive all the Jews into the sea.
  12. The Jewish state of Israel survived that war and is now in its eighth decade.
  13. In the 1948 war, the neighboring countries of Egypt and Jordan conquered most of the land allotted in the 1947 U.N. resolution to the future independent Arab state, but did not establish an independent Arab state in those areas.

These items followed the statements, which were not struck, that "Plaintiff is a Zionist by dint of his religion and his national origin" and "Zionism is the movement for the re-establishment, and now the development and protection, of a sovereign Jewish nation in its ancestral homeland. Zionism is not just a political movement; for the vast majority of Jewish people across time and space, including Plaintiff, Zionism is and always has been an integral part of their Jewish, often religious, identities."

Eugene Volokh is the Thomas M. Siebel Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford, and the Gary T. Schwartz Distinguished Professor of Law Emeritus and Distinguished Research Professor at UCLA School of Law. Naturally, his posts here (like the opinions of the other bloggers) are his own, and not endorsed by any institution. He is also the co-host of the Free Speech Unmuted podcast.