Antisemitism bill clears House Rules panel following partisan feud

“Now more than ever, it’s critical the federal government’s definition of antisemitism is clear and uniform,” House Rules Chair Michael Burgess (right) said after pointing to several protests on campus.

Lawmakers on the House Rules Committee advanced a bipartisan bill Monday night attempting to codify a definition of antisemitism — after the panel’s Democrats bashed the measure at length.

The legislation — H.R. 6090, the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2023 — is one of several bills introduced in Congress since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and the burst of pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses. But ahead of Monday’s 7-4 vote, Democrats, including New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, told the Rules panel the measure was deeply flawed.

“This bill threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech,” Nadler, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said. “Speech that is critical of Israel alone does not constitute unlawful discrimination … the bill sweeps too broadly.”

The bill, led by Rep. Michael Lawler (R-N.Y.), has 13 Democratic co-sponsors and would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a federal anti-discrimination law that bars discrimination based on shared ancestry, ethnic characteristics or national origin. All schools that receive federal funds must comply with Title VI, but it has been unclear how to determine when free speech crosses into antisemitic discrimination.

Many Republicans on the panel said the bill is needed to protect Jewish students and provide clarity for the agencies that enforce the law.

“Now more than ever, it’s critical the federal government’s definition of antisemitism is clear and uniform,” House Rules Chair Michael Burgess (R-Texas) said after pointing to several protests on campus. “Congress must clearly define antisemitism, so universities are empowered to take appropriate and decisive steps to keep Jewish students safe and respond to exercises of speech so hostile and discriminatory that it is not covered by the protections enshrined in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

Committee members approved a closed rule and one hour of debate.

Still, some Republicans expressed their reservations with the bill.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) was critical that no definition was actually written in the bill and that it just referred to the IHRA definition and posed several hypothetical comments to the bill’s supporters. “It’s dangerous to take one definition,” he said, though he still voted to clear the bill.

The Biden administration did not weigh in on the bill even though it responded with a statement of administration policy to six other measures the Rules Committee considered on Monday.

Nadler, who was brought in to testify against the bill, had previously supported a similar one that would have codified multiple definitions of antisemitism. But after being pressed on that support, Nadler said: “I was mistaken to do so.”

He explained that he would support a bill that did not include the IHRA definition and included several definitions of antisemitism.

Nadler and other Democrats repeatedly pressed Republicans to instead boost funding for the Education Department and the Justice Department’s Office for Civil Rights, which are responsible for enforcing anti-discrimination laws. Nadler also urged lawmakers to consider a competing bipartisan proposal, which would establish the first-ever national coordinator to counter antisemitism.

“I’m really concerned that this bill repeats what we’ve seen so many times in this Congress: We’re seeing the House Republican majority trying to exploit real problems to divide people and score political points rather than providing actual solutions,” Rep. Mary Gay Scanlon (D-Pa.) said, also adding that she would support the other proposal.