Nevada school district agrees to settlement after anti-Semitic incident

Swastika in the skin of a 17-year-old Jewish teenager who is autistic. Photo: X/Twitter

The Clark County School District (CCSD) in Las Vegas, Nevada, has reached a settlement in a discrimination lawsuit alleging that an autistic Jewish student was not protected from a heinous anti-Semitic incident in which someone carved a swastika into his skin at school. The injury was not discovered until he returned home.

The young man, who wears a kippah and cannot speak, was attacked in March 2023. In addition to the physical injuries, someone also ripped open a bag that his service dog was carrying. Since the school where the incident occurred, Ed W. Clark High School, did not have surveillance cameras installed, there is little information to date about when and where the incident occurred.

“No child should have to live in fear because of an unsafe educational environment,” Brooke Goldstein – executive director and founder of The Lawfare Project, which brought the case to trial along with Freeman Law Offices and Rogich Law Firm – said in a statement Thursday about the settlement. “This heinous and disgusting attack on our client should never have happened, and we hope that the Clark County School District will ensure the safety of all of its Jewish students going forward.”

According to The Lawfare Project, CCSD has agreed to pay the young man’s family an undisclosed amount and provide “educational services” that were not described in the settlement announcement. The school district did not respond to The Generalfor a comment on this story.

The attack on the student came during a wave of anti-Semitic bullying incidents in elementary and secondary schools and sparked widespread outrage when it was first reported. In the months that followed, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), a nonprofit founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, responded with a billboard campaign on the Las Vegas Strip. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which had just released data showing a 49 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents in elementary and secondary schools in 2022, strongly condemned the attack, saying, “Not only was this student targeted because of his identifiable beliefs, but he was also particularly vulnerable because of his disability.”

“Today’s settlement is a step in the right direction to hold CCSD accountable for its failure to ensure the safety of a Jewish autistic student and provide him with the special education he is entitled to under the law,” said Ziporah Reich, litigation director for the Lawfare Project, in a statement Thursday. “Both the financial compensation and educational services we obtained on the student’s behalf will bring a measure of justice to the student and his family.”

According to the latest data from the ADL, anti-Semitism in K-12 schools continues to increase every year. In 2023, anti-Semitic incidents in U.S. public schools increased by 135 percent, a figure that also includes an increase in vandalism and assault.

“In-school bullying in 2023 also included one-off incidents, such as when a middle school administrator received a note containing anti-Semitic death threats or when a high school student threatened his Jewish classmates that he would beat them up if they supported Israel,” the civil rights group said in its annual 2023 audit of anti-Semitic incidents. “Given the insidious nature of bullying and the fact that many children may not feel encouraged to report their experiences, it is likely that the actual number of anti-Semitic incidents in school was significantly higher than the data reported in the audit.”

The issue has led to numerous civil rights complaints filed with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR).

Earlier this month, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced that the Community School of Davidson, a charter school in North Carolina, had agreed to settle a civil rights lawsuit. The lawsuit alleges that school administrators failed to address a series of disturbing anti-Semitic incidents, in which a non-Jewish student was called a “dirty Jew,” told that “the oven is over there,” and bombarded with other derogatory comments too vulgar for publication. According to the complaint, the verbal abuse began after the child wore an Israeli sports jersey.

As part of an agreement with OCR, the school has agreed, among other things, to adopt a zero-tolerance policy toward racial slurs, introduce anti-discrimination training for teachers and staff, and “develop or revise” its approach to dealing with racism.

This case is not the first the Brandeis Center has pursued on behalf of students in grades K-12. In February, it filed a lawsuit alleging that the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in California inflicted severe psychological trauma on Jewish students as young as eight years old and created a hostile learning environment.

The problem escalated after the October 7 Hamas massacre across southern Israel, the indictment says. Since then, BUSD teachers have allegedly spread anti-Semitic stereotypes about Israel in their classrooms and weaponized subjects like art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler colonial state” committing genocide against Palestinians. While this was happening, senior BUSD officials allegedly ignored complaints of discrimination and tacitly condoned hateful behavior even as it spread throughout the student body.

“The Jewish community has been slower than it should have been to recognize the threat of anti-Semitism in higher education. Now we are in danger of repeating the same problem in elementary and secondary schools,” said Brandeis Center Chairman and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education Kenneth Marcus. The General on June 4. “It’s scary to admit, but the fact is that the situation in many high schools is beginning to replicate the situation on some of our most troubling campuses. Elementary schools are not safe either. One consequence of this is that it could be even worse on universities, since freshmen are only arriving there after having already been indoctrinated in elementary and secondary school.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.