Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Lawyer in Michigan synagogue-protest case accuses judge of being antisemitic

Says it is unconscionable to order an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor to pay $158,721.25 to neo-Nazis who protested outside her house of worship for 18 years

The lawyer representing congregants in a long-running dispute over perennial  anti-Israel and antisemitic protests outside their Ann Arbor synagogue on Saturday mornings has accused the federal judge presiding over the case of herself being antisemitic. 

The U.S. Supreme Court declined this spring to hear the case, which pits the protesters’ First Amendment right of free expression against the worshippers’ First Amendment right to freely exercise their religion. Lower courts had dismissed the lawsuit the congregants filed in 2019, and U.S. District Court Judge Victoria Roberts ordered them to pay $159,000 in legal fees.

“Considering all of her rulings, taken together in their entirety, the appearance of antisemitism is undeniable,” the lawyer, Marc Susselman, wrote in a brief filed Thursday appealing the order. 

Susselman noted that one of the plaintiffs is an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, and that some of the protesters also picketed outside a Holocaust museum on Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2014 with signs saying “Free Ernst Zundel,” the author of a book titled “The Hitler We Knew and Loved,” who was jailed in Germany for Holocaust denial and inciting racial hatred. (Zundel died in 2017.)

The protests began in 2003 outside an Ann Arbor building that houses services for both the Conservative Beth Israel Congregation and the Pardes Hannah Congregation, which is affiliated with the Jewish Renewal movement. Neither congregation was involved in the lawsuit; Jewish groups including Agudath Israel of America, the Rabbinical Council of America and the Orthodox Jewish Chamber of Commerce filed briefs supporting the plaintiffs.

In his latest court filing, Susselman questioned how the judge arrived at the amount of the legal fee —$158,721 — and how the protesters’ signs with slogans including   “Resist Jewish Power,” “Jewish Power Corrupts,” and “No More Holocaust Movies” could be protected as addressing “issues of public concern.” 

“This is not an issue that may be minimized, rationalized, or swept under the  carpet,” Susselman wrote. 

“The specter of the appearance of racial, ethnic or religious bias in the rulings of any judge, regardless of the judge’s own race, ethnicity or religion, must be forthrightly addressed, investigated and, if sustained, sanctioned,” he added. (Judge Roberts is Black.) “When such bias seeps into the judiciary, it becomes a cancer which undermines the administration of  justice in this country.”

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse..

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.