The University of Pennsylvania has escalated its fight against a federal subpoena, filing an appeal and requesting a court-ordered pause on a ruling that would require it to disclose identifying information about Jewish members of its campus community to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by May 1.
The University of Pennsylvania has formally appealed a federal judge’s order enforcing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission subpoena, escalating a closely watched legal dispute over antisemitism complaints, employee privacy, and the limits of federal authority. On Monday, Penn filed a notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit and simultaneously filed a motion in a Philadelphia court to temporarily halt enforcement of the ruling while the appeal plays out.
The appeal challenges a March 31 ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Gerald J. Pappert that ordered Penn to comply with the subpoena by May 1. On Tuesday, the district court gave the federal government until Friday to respond to Penn’s stay request, with Penn granted until the following Tuesday to file a reply.
The EEOC issued the subpoena in July 2025 to advance its investigation into antisemitism at Penn, seeking names, email addresses, phone numbers, and mailing addresses of individuals affiliated with Jewish organizations on campus, including members of Penn’s Jewish studies program and related campus groups. Penn filed a petition to dismiss the subpoena, which the EEOC denied, and the department sued Penn in November 2025 for failing to comply.
Around the time of the lawsuit, Penn told the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent and other media outlets that it had submitted over 100 documents to assist with the investigation but refused to hand over the names and contact information of Jewish community members without their consent. “Violating their privacy and trust is antithetical to ensuring Penn’s Jewish community feels protected and safe,” the university said in a statement in November.
In January 2026, Penn submitted a brief to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania resisting the subpoena on First Amendment grounds, arguing it was too broad and that complying would require the university to effectively identify employees by religion.
In its memorandum of law supporting the stay request, Penn argued the demand has no legal precedent. “This demand is so novel that the EEOC has cited no authority in which a court enforced a subpoena conscripting an employer to identify employees of a specific religion,” the memo read, adding that Penn is aware of none either.
Penn contended that the Third Circuit “will be called upon to scrutinize the constitutionality of the subpoena” and that it is “reasonably likely to find that the subpoena invades constitutionally protected privacy interests and unjustifiably chills First Amendment rights.” The university argued that being forced to comply before the appeal is resolved would cause “irreparable harm.” If the district court declines to grant a stay, Penn requested at minimum a temporary seven-day stay to seek an emergency stay directly from the Third Circuit.
Penn also argued that the balance of harm favors the university over the government. “Penn will face irreparable injury absent a stay, the EEOC will not be injured by a stay, and a stay serves the public interest,” the memo read.
Pappert, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, ruled that the subpoena met the legal standards for enforcement, found the requested information “relevant” to the agency’s investigation, and rejected Penn’s arguments that the requests were overly burdensome or unconstitutional. His order did include one limit: Penn was not required to disclose which specific Jewish organizations individuals belonged to.
Pappert was pointed in his criticism of how both sides had framed the dispute. “Penn and other groups and associations the Court permitted to intervene significantly raised the dispute’s temperature by impliedly and even expressly comparing the EEOC’s efforts to protect Jewish employees from antisemitism to the Holocaust and the Nazis’ compilation of ‘lists of Jews,'” he wrote. “Such allegations are unfortunate and inappropriate.”
The judge defended the subpoena’s purpose, writing that though the request was “ineptly worded,” it had “an understandable purpose” to obtain, “in a narrowly tailored way, as opposed to seeking information on all university employees, information on individuals in Penn’s Jewish community who could have experienced or witnessed antisemitism in the workplace.”
Faculty, Jewish and civil rights groups intervened in the case to oppose the subpoena, warning it could set a dangerous precedent. The American Civil Liberties Union argued in January that collecting the information would create a “user-friendly tool for discrimination.”
The case stems from a federal effort to investigate antisemitism on college campuses following the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, Israel’s war in Gaza and the wave of protests that followed. The EEOC launched an inquiry into Penn in late 2023 after a commissioner filed a charge alleging a hostile work environment for Jewish employees, and Penn was among several schools placed under investigation at that time.
The investigation became part of the Trump administration’s push to scrutinize how universities handled antisemitism complaints during the escalation of Israel’s response to the Hamas attack, which caused the deaths of thousands of Palestinians and displaced millions more. Trump has long accused elite colleges of antisemitism and, in 2019, signed an executive order extending Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to cover antisemitic acts, laying the legal groundwork for the EEOC’s current inquiry.
