Jewish NYC health workers say Mamdanis hostility to Israel lead to discrimination, retaliation: suit

Jewish workers with the city Health Department are barred from forming an internal group to provide resources for each other, even though “indigenous peoples” and LGBTQ+ colleagues are not, a lawsuit says.The seven plaintiff employees also claimed the agency under Mayor Zohran Mamdani opened a retaliatory investigation into them when they used their internal email to publicly mourn Jews killed at a Hanukah gathering in Australia last year, according to the bombshell 110-page complaint filed in Manhattan federal court.“The city told its Jewish employees that every identity counts except theirs, then investigated them for grieving,” said Mark Goldfeder, the CEO of the National Jewish Advocacy Center, which filed the suit on behalf of the workers.“City Hall can hold whatever opinions it likes about the Jewish state; it cannot make hostility to the Jewish people a condition of working for New York.”Mamdani’s name is mentioned 119 times in the suit, which claims his hostility toward the Jewish state of Israel contributed to anti-Jewish hostility in the Health Department.The Health Department runs an Employee Resource Group, or ERG, program that provides recognized groups with an agency email account, a SharePoint page, a place on the agency calendar and a $5,000 annual budget.The complaint alleges that DOH supervisors rejected the proposed Jewish group, HINENU — which in Hebrew means, “Here we are” or, “Here I am” — on the grounds that it was religious in nature and that an ERG cannot be based on religious identity.But the plaintiffs countered that HINENU’s charter would have been around Jewish peoplehood, ancestry, and culture and would not engage in religious worship, religious instruction or political advocacy.Some of six ERGs that the agency has approved for recognition involve the “indigenous peoples of Southwest Asia and North Africa” and the LGBTQ+ community, with the former touching on multiple religious identities in its own chart...