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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has opened an investigation into alleged antisemitic discrimination within the National Education Association, including several incidents at its conference in Portland last summer, according to the coalition that originally filed the complaint.
The Louis D. Brandeis Center Coalition to Combat Anti-Semitism filed a charge in May to the EEOC, close to a year after the NEA hosted its annual conference in Portland in July 2025. A spokesperson for the EEOC would not either confirm nor deny the opening of an investigation, citing confidentiality.
Shortly after the Portland conference, members with the NEA’s Jewish Affairs Caucus wrote to the union’s leadership to share “deep concerns” around how Jewish delegates were treated in Portland. It detailed multiple incidents where Jewish delegates were singled out with “‘gotcha’ questions” because of their identities, asked if they supported Israel or cared about “‘babies dying in Gaza.’”
There was also hesitancy in NEA’s body of delegates, the letter alleges, to recognize Jewish American Heritage Month. In one incident, Jewish delegates say a reference to an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor who died in a Molotov cocktail attack in Boulder, Colorado while attending a gathering in support of Israeli hostages was “met with laughter and clapping by some participants in the assembly.”
There was also a controversial new business item at the conference that recommended a boycott of materials from the Anti-Defamation League. Becky Pringle, NEA’s president, confirmed days later on July 10 that the NEA had no current partnerships with the ADL and that the executive committee would consider the recommendation. As Education Week later reported, Pringle and the committee backed off from the proposal just a week later, determining it would not further the organization’s mission of academic freedom.
In the same July 10 statement, Pringle had called for the union to combat all forms of hate, including both “antisemitism and anti-Palestinian bigotry.” The JAC letter took issue with this, noting that the NEA did not cite any issues of the latter and that human dignity is not “a zero sum game.”
“Many Jewish educators left Portland questioning whether they still have a home in the union they have long served,” the JAC letter read. “We ask you to help rebuild that trust by showing, through real action, not just cautious or equivocal statements, that the NEA stands with all its members in how it conducts its business.”
The Brandeis Center says the EEOC alerted the organization that the NEA is under investigation by the agency’s Washington Field Office, and that the center has been working with the federal agency to provide documents. In its charge, the center alleges the same antisemitic discrimination that the JAC letter detailed at the conference. It also alleges the NEA reduced security at the conference even after those tabling the JAC table were harassed and physically intimidated, among other charges.
The union is also facing a number of allegations of antisemitism from the Brandeis Center outside of the Portland conference, including for “a Native Land Digital map that erased Israel entirely” in the wake of October 7, 2023. The center alleges the NEA has a long record of discrimination against its Jewish and Israeli members, which it alleges has caused many financial losses and emotional distress.
The NEA did not immediately respond to WW’s request for comment.
“Unions exist to advocate for fair wages, protect employee rights, and ensure equal treatment for all members,” Kenneth Marcus, the chairman and CEO of the Brandeis Center, said in a statement. “The last thing they should do is to violate the rights of the very people whose rights they exist to protect.”
The EEOC on average takes about 10 months to investigate a charge. When the investigation concludes, the EEOC will make a determination of the merits of the charge, and outcomes vary depending on that determination.
