Published by Law.com on 2/06/2025 Citing a rise in antisemitic crime, The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law announced Thursday it created The Center for Legal Innovation (CLI), a public interest litigation group that will focus on using “the law to combat all forms of anti-Semitism”, including in the workplace, with regard to healthcare, housing, government services and other areas where people might be affected. Serving on CLI’s advisory board are a number of boldfaced names from both sides of the political spectrum. While Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison chair Brad Karp has historically backed Democrats and liberal causes, delivering substantial support to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign in 2024 and speaking out against the gun industry, he’s collaborating here with former Attorney General Bill Barr, who served in the first Trump administration, and former Solicitor General Paul Clement, who left Kirkland & Ellis in order to keep representing gun clients. Meanwhile, Consovoy McCarthy head Thomas McCarthy and Holzmann Vogel partner Jason Torchinsky have routinely represented GOP politicians and litigated on behalf of conservative causes. Another board member, Erik Jaffe, is a prominent litigator based in Washington, D.C., known for his First Amendment work on both sides of the political aisle. Also on the list is prominent Weil, Gotshal & Manges litigator Jonathan Polkes and Burford Capital vice chair David Perla. The full list of CLI’s board can be found here. Jaffe said in an interview that he was not that surprised that so many from different political walks of life would band together. “Despite the social fashions of one side or the other changing over time, I have always understood it [the First Amendment] to be the cornerstone of American pluralism,” he said. “Tomorrow, the shoe might be on the other foot.” Polkes, the Weil litigator who worked with the Brandeis Center in achieving a settlement with Harvard University in January where the school would increase its antisemitism efforts, said that work led him to CLI. “The need for this became so clear, and I think groups like this need to be vigilant moving forward,” he said in an interview. “They [Jewish students] need to be defended as aggressively as any other group that feels marginalized.” The CLI will have its primary operations run out of New York, while it will also have outposts in Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles. According to a statement released by the CLI, the initiative is in response to the rising tide of antisemitic crimes, which FBI statistics show as increasing 63% year over year from 2022 to 2023. The statement states that the increase coincided with the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks by Hamas on Israelis in the Gaza strip and the subsequent retaliation against and displacement of millions of people in the area. “The American Jewish community needs a public interest law firm that takes litigation efforts beyond education-focused Title VI complaints to a host of other areas where Jews are being unfairly and illegally discriminated against and harassed,” Kenneth Marcus, founder and chairman of the Brandeis Center and the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education, General Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Staff Director at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, said in a statement. “This means standing up for individual victims as well as going after groups, companies, and organizations that are funding, organizing, and enabling illegal anti-Semitic activity.” The CLI will “operate under the Brandeis Center’s umbrella as a natural extension of its current civil rights litigation efforts,” the Center said in a statement. One of the CLI’s first cases, it said, was that of a Jewish father and his son, who were asked to leave an Oakland cafe after the owner of the cafe noticed the father’s Star of David hat, which the owner felt was a symbol of the violence Israel had enacted on civilians in Gaza. The case caught attention and condemnation, and even Sen. Adam Schiff, D-California, weighed in with a statement denouncing the cafe owner’s behavior. “Kicking a patron out of a restaurant for no reason other than their Jewish ancestry is blatant antisemitism,” Schiff said in a statement. “No one should be turned away because of their faith. This kind of bigotry has no place in California.”