Anti-Jewish harassment, death threats in Philadelphia public school forced two families to move away, lawsuit claims

Three families are suing the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and Academy At Palumbo High School on charges of violating their civil rights when their children’s safety was threatened.

The plaintiffs say their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated during a chain of events beginning in June 2024.

The sons of the plaintiffs – all 16 years old – entered Palumbo’s Prayer Room while three Muslim female students were also inside, according to the lawsuit.

The room was decorated with “exclusively Islamic imagery and prayer items” and sported a Palestinian flag.

The three boys – one of whom is Jewish – were only in the room for a few minutes. One reportedly prayed and chanted in Hebrew; they spoke quietly and then left.

But later that day, rumors began to spread that the boys “trashed” the prayer room, declared hatred for Muslims and even performed sexually suggestive movements.

“It’s a stunning, insane story,” said Lori Lowenthal Marcus, legal director of The Deborah Project, a Jewish civil rights group representing the plaintiffs.

“Rumors started spreading that the boys had pulled the hijabs off the girls, that they had interrupted them praying, that they had committed sexual acts on the Muslim prayer rug on the floor – which of course is not a prayer rug, since it is a rug on the floor,” Marcus continued. “The boys started getting death threats.”

The plaintiffs were confronted by a mob of angry students. One even received threatening phone calls from a student who had previously assaulted him, declaring he would come to the plaintiff’s house to attack him again.

The rumors sparked a string of similarly threatening social media posts, which included profanity, anti-Jewish hostility and death threats, revealing the identities of the plaintiffs, the suit says.

When the boys’ parents spoke to the school about their safety concerns, their sons were accused of entering the prayer room during “girls time” – even though no sex-segregation was previously indicated – and were suspended.

After August – two months after the initial incident – Palumbo released a letter saying “allegations of harassment and discrimination had been made” but that “rumors spread on social media have exacerbated claims beyond the allegations that were reported.”

Two of the plaintiff families, shocked by the presumption of guilt and fearing for their son’s safety, decided they had “no choice but to flee Philadelphia and its school district.”

The legal complaint, filed on Aug. 6, alleges SDP and Palumbo staff violated the boys’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.

The School District of Philadelphia was already subject to a federal investigation by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights in 2024 for fostering antisemitism.

The investigation found SDP failed to address rampant antisemitism, including swastikas being drawn on school property, school leaders posting antisemitic content on social media, and a district culture openly hostile to Jews while elevating Muslim practices and supporting Hamas.

“All of this happened because the school and the district are protecting a Muslim-only space in a public school,” Marcus concluded.

“It was, from start to finish, a disaster. Everyone’s worst nightmare of what public schools have become.”