NYC health department refused a Jewish staff group, then investigated its leaders for mourning the Bondi Beach massacre, lawsuit says

Seven employees of New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene have sued the city, saying the department refused to recognize their Jewish employee group and then investigated its leaders after they mourned the Jews murdered at a Chanukah celebration on Bondi Beach in Sydney, JNS reports.

The suit, filed Nov. 10 in federal court in Manhattan by the National Jewish Advocacy Center, says the department turned down the group, HINENU, in July 2025 on the grounds that an employee group "identity cannot be based on religious groups." The department had recognized six other employee groups, including one for staff of Southwest Asian and North African ancestry, and gives them an agency email account, a web page and a $5,000 yearly budget.

On Dec. 16, 2025, two days after the Bondi Beach attack, HINENU emailed about 85 city employees a Chanukah message mourning the victims. It quoted Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz of Manhattan's Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun, who said that "globalizing the intifada is a call to murder" and that "anti-Zionism kills Jews."

Within hours of the group asking senior leaders for support, the department's equal employment opportunity director ordered it to "desist" from using its email account, the complaint says. The department then opened a nearly four-month investigation of eight group leaders for "racial and religious discrimination." In interviews, one investigator asked whether the Bondi Beach massacre was "an antisemitic attack or an anti-Zionist attack," the lawsuit alleges.

"They had no empathy for the feelings of the Jews about that horrific attack on Jews, who were trying to observe Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Australia," said Alan Scheiner, a lawyer for the employees. The suit asks the court to order the department to recognize HINENU and erase the investigation from its records.