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href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-court-throws-out-lawsuit-against-academic-boycott-israel">https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/us-court-throws-out-lawsuit-against-academic-boycott-israel</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">US court throws out lawsuit against
academic boycott of Israel</h1>
<p class="node__submitted">
<span class="field field-author"><a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/people/ali-abunimah">Ali
Abunimah</a></span> <span class="field field-blog">-</span>
<span class="field field-publication-date"><span
class="date-display-single"
content="2019-02-05T17:27:18+00:00">5 February 2019</span></span>
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<figure id="file-74426"><source media="(min-width:
72rem)"><figcaption><small><span></span></small></figcaption></figure>
<p>A federal judge in Washington, DC, on Monday
dismissed a lawsuit against the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/american-studies-association">American
Studies Association</a> over its decision to support
the boycott of Israeli academic institutions.</p>
<p>The ruling is a significant blow to efforts by Israel
lobby groups to use courts to harass, intimidate and
silence supporters of Palestinian rights in US
universities – a tactic known as <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lawfare">lawfare</a>.</p>
<p>In April 2016, several current and former members of
the ASA <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/frivolous-lawsuit-aims-reverse-asas-israel-boycott">filed
the lawsuit</a> against the group over its 2013 <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/asa-membership-votes-boycott-israel-landslide">resolution
backing the academic boycott</a>.</p>
<p>In his 20-page ruling, US District Judge Rudolph
Contreras wrote that the plaintiffs had no standing to
file a lawsuit seeking damages on behalf of the ASA,
and that their individual damage claims came nowhere
near the $75,000 minimum required for them to seek
relief in federal court.</p>
<p>At most, the individual plaintiffs could seek damages
of a few hundred dollars to cover membership dues they
allege were misappropriated, but they would have to
find some other venue to pursue their claims, the
judge found.</p>
<p>“The court basically said, in no uncertain words,
that the plaintiffs suing ASA lied when they claimed
to have ‘suffered significant economic and
reputational damage.’” Radhika Sainath, senior
attorney with the civil rights group Palestine Legal,
told The Electronic Intifada. “But, as the court
explained, ‘nowhere’ in the lawsuit could could the
plaintiffs explain what that damage was. It didn’t
pass the smell test.”</p>
<h2>“Desperate lawsuits”</h2>
<p>“I’m thrilled that this baseless case has been
dismissed. It served no purpose other than persecuting
those who dare to criticize Israeli policy and seek to
end the occupation through peaceful means,” <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/steven-salaita">Steven
Salaita</a>, one of the defendants, told The
Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>“Our victory further illustrates that it’s important
to stand firm against attempts to silence those
devoted to the cause of justice.”</p>
<p>In 2014, Salaita was <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/university-illinois-fires-professor-steven-salaita-after-gaza-massacre-tweets">fired</a>
by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for
social media comments criticizing Israel’s assault on
Gaza that year. He sued the university for <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/judge-clears-way-steven-salaita-lawsuit-over-gaza-tweets-firing">breach
of contract</a>, alleging administrators <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/steven-salaita-sues-univ-illinois-donors-firing-over-israel-criticism">acted
under pressure</a> from pro-Israel donors, later <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/steven-salaita-settles-lawsuit-univ-illinois">settling
the case</a>.</p>
<p>Salaita then found himself targeted by the lawsuit
against the American Studies Association.</p>
<p>Along with Salaita, the lawsuit named as individual
defendants the academics and Palestinian rights
advocates <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/lisa-duggan">Lisa
Duggan</a>, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/curtis-marez">Curtis
Marez</a>, Avery Gordon, Neferti Tadiar, <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/sunaina-maira">Sunaina
Maira</a>, Chandan Reddy, Jasbir Puar, J. Kehaulani
Kauanui and John Stephens.</p>
<p>“These desperate lawsuits brought to silence
advocates of Palestinian rights are not only losers –
they’re helping to grow the movement by making even
clearer who’s on the wrong side of history – who is
the aggressor, who is unreasonable and who wants to
silence debate,” Maria LaHood, deputy legal director
for the Center for Constitutional Rights, told The
Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>LaHood, who represented Salaita in the ASA lawsuit,
added, “Freedom, justice and equality have always been
on the right side of history.”</p>
<p>The <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/ali-abunimah/israel-lobby-group-trying-sue-steven-salaita">complaint
alleged</a> that a “cabal of USACBI leaders”
surreptitiously took over the ASA and used their
positions on its executive committee and national
council to foist the boycott resolution on the
association’s unsuspecting membership, misspending ASA
money in the process.</p>
<p>As part of the solidarity movement, USACBI, the US
Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of
Israel, <a
href="https://usacbi.org/academic-boycott/">argues</a>
that Israeli academic institutions should be boycotted
because they are complicit in Israel’s systematic
violations of Palestinian rights.</p>
<h2>Driven by Israel lobby</h2>
<p>The force behind the lawsuit was the <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/louis-d-brandeis-center-human-rights">Louis
D. Brandeis Center</a>, an Israel advocacy
organization that has for years worked to smear
Palestine solidarity activism as anti-Semitism, and
attempts to suppress it with frivolous lawsuits and <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/victory-campus-free-speech-us-dept-education-throws-out-anti-semitism">bogus
civil rights complaints</a>.</p>
<p>Until February last year, the Brandeis Center’s
president <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/tags/kenneth-marcus">Kenneth
Marcus</a> was an attorney for the plaintiffs.</p>
<p>Last June, the Senate <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/nora-barrows-friedman/trumps-civil-rights-enforcer-could-use-law-silence-students">confirmed</a>
Marcus as the Trump administration’s top civil rights
enforcer at the Department of Education, a position
that potentially allows him to pursue his <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/content/trump-official-wants-students-prosecuted-israel-protests/25526">campaign
to repress supporters of Palestinian human rights</a>
from within the federal government.</p>
<p>The lawsuit against ASA had previously suffered a
major setback.</p>
<p>In March 2017, the court <a
href="https://electronicintifada.net/blogs/charlotte-silver/us-judge-throws-out-key-claim-against-academic-boycott-israel">threw
out the plaintiffs’ key claim</a> that the ASA had
acted beyond its charter by backing the boycott.</p>
<p>“The boycott resolution was aimed both at encouraging
academic freedom for Palestinians and strengthening
relations between American institutions and
Palestinians,” Judge Contreras wrote at the time.
“Thus, it was not contrary to the ASA’s express
purposes.”</p>
<p>But Contreras allowed other claims to go forward –
until he eventually threw the lawsuit out altogether.</p>
<p>“The Zionists can’t accept the extent of revulsion
over Israel’s crimes so they imagine that any group
that stands up for justice has been tricked and
manipulated into doing so,” Mark Kleiman, the attorney
for J. Kehualani Kaunui and Jasbir Puar, told The
Electronic Intifada.</p>
<p>“This blindness partially stems from their own
reliance on tricks, bribes and subterfuge to slow down
what is rapidly becoming a mass movement,” Kleiman
added.</p>
<p>“In this lawsuit they simply made up accusations and
then pretended they had been harmed by the things they
imagined people had done.”</p>
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