AJC Welcomes Decision on Pine Bush School District Antisemitism

AJC welcomed a federal judge’s ruling against the Pine Bush school district, which sought to dismiss a lawsuit by the parents of several children victimized by antisemitic bullying.

“The families of children traumatized by rampant antisemitism at Pine Bush schools waited far too long for relief from systematic religious harassment,” said AJC General Counsel Marc Stern. “The Pine Bush school district must be held accountable for a longstanding pattern of hatred targeting Jewish students. Even now monetary relief can only provide partial relief for the trauma these students suffered at the hands of their classmates and, worse yet, from indifferent school administrators.”

Denying the school district’s request to dismiss the lawsuit, Judge Kenneth M. Karas ruled that a jury could reasonably find that the children had “suffered severe and discriminatory harassment, that the district had actual knowledge of the harassment, and that the district was deliberately indifferent to the harassment.”

The parents of five Jewish children filed a lawsuit last year against the Pine Bush school district, asserting that each child was traumatized psychologically, and some were harmed physically, by other students. Swastikas were frequently drawn on school walls, desks, computers and other places -- and often left to stand, notwithstanding complaints to teachers and school administrators.

In one case, according to the lawsuit, a sixth grader was held by one student while another drew a swastika on her face. Coins were frequently tossed at students, and in another case an eighth grader “attempted to shove a quarter down [the throat of a Jewish student]” while another “held [her] arms so that she could not move.”

Despite repeated attempts by parents to get teachers and administrators to stop this pattern of antisemitic bullying, school officials seemingly did little or nothing. “Your expectations for changing inbred prejudice may be a bit unrealistic,” Philip C. Steinberg, superintendent of the Pine Bush Central School District, wrote to a parent of one Jewish student who had complained about the continuing harassment.