"A big law giant is running background checks on job applicants who attended anti-Israel demonstrations" 10 July 2024

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Sullivan & Cromwell...has employed background check company HireRight to root out job applicants who have participated in recent anti-Israel demonstrations on campuses, according to a recent report from the New York Times.

Under the new policy, applicants who have taken part in antisemitic protests, or in demonstrations in which phrases that might be “triggering” to Jews have been uttered, could potentially be disqualified, according to Joseph Shenker, a senior chair at the firm.

“People are taking their outrage about what’s going on in Gaza and turning it into racist antisemitism,” Shenker told the Times.

According to the Times, the policy could disqualify applicants from the hiring process even if they didn’t participate in controversial chants or rally cries. Simply being present at a protest could warrant scrutiny, and an applicant found to have been at a protest may have to explain to the firm whether they did anything to moderate the behavior of those around them, according to the Times.

Gadeir Abbas, an attorney at the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told Fortune that the new policy was “objectionable.”

“What Sullivan & Cromwell is doing is they’re creating the foundations for future blacklists that will say more about Sullivan & Cromwell than it will about the kids and students that they’re targeting,” he said.

Abbas also said the policy may constitute a violation of Title VII, a provision of civil rights law that prohibits discrimination based on race, ethnicity, and nationality.

Private employees have fewer free speech protections than those at public institutions. Firms like Sullivan & Cromwell can make hiring decisions based on the publicly expressed beliefs of applicants, provided they don’t specifically discriminate against protected categories like race or religion.

But because of the breadth of the new policy Sullivan & Cromwell is pursuing, Abbas said it may constitute illegal discrimination against Muslims and Palestinians.

“Law students and people that may apply to Sullivan & Cromwell, some of them are going to be Palestinian, some of them are going to be Arab or Muslim,” he told Fortune. “And because we’re talking about a genocide, there’s something racial about that kind of crime. It’s just the case that the opposition to the destruction of Palestinians arises inexorably from a person’s ancestry. If you’re Palestinian, you’re going to be opposed to it.”..

But Shenker told the Times that the policy wasn’t inherently condemning protests against Israel in general, or scrutinizing privately held beliefs. Rather, the background checks were merely an extension of the firm’s existing position on hate speech. He also said that the screenings wouldn’t have been necessary if schools had done more from the outset to protect Jewish students and clamp down on anti-semitic demonstrations.

Dylan Saba, an attorney at Palestine Legal, told Fortune that the level of scrutiny the policy would subject applicants to was so “draconian,” that he didn’t see how the firm would be able to enforce it without running afoul of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

“My charitable assessment is that this is mostly for PR,” Saba said. “They want to signal to some group of people that they’re really out in front of stamping out criticism of Israel and pro-Palestine views.”

Sullivan & Cromwell did not respond to Fortune’s request for comment...

The Times also reported that several of S&C’s competitors are privately mulling similar policies...