A Jewish civil rights group is urging the Justice Department to investigate Mayor Zohran Mamdani and his administration for alleged “discriminatory failure to protect Jewish residents from antisemitic hate” crimes.
The bombshell accusations from the National Jewish Advocacy Center come two days after the Poetica Coffee shop in Brooklyn told pro-Israel Jewish Rep. Dan Goldman never to enter the eatery again, claiming it doesn’t serve “genocdial enablers.”
“The National Jewish Advocacy Center writes to request that the Civil Rights Division open an investigation, under its pattern-or-practice authority … into whether the City of New York and the New York City Police Department are denying Jewish New Yorkers the equal protection of the laws by failing to protect them against a documented and severe wave of antisemitic violence,” said the letter signed by NJAC CEO Mark Goldfeder and other staff lawyers.
NJAC cites NYPD data showing Jewish New Yorkers were the victims of 330 reported hate crimes in 2025 — or 57% of the total – while Jews account for just one of every 10 New York residents.
“That’s more than six a week. This referral asks the Division to answer why the City’s response to that record runs in the opposite direction from the data,” Goldfeder said in the letter dated Tuesday to Patrick McCarthy, acting chief of the Justice Department’s Special Litigation Section Civil Rights Division.
The referral claims the mayor’s own decisions and words have contributed to discrimination against Jews.
“Whether the City adopts or revokes a definition of antisemitism for its agencies, how it structures and funds the office charged with combating hate, and whether a Council bill protecting Jewish schoolchildren becomes law or is vetoed, are executive policy choices the Charter assigns to the Mayor,” the letter to the Justice Department said.
Mamdani, upon taking office in January, rescinded executive orders approved by preceding Mayor Eric Adams to combat antisemitism. He also vetoed legislation to set “buffer zones” around schools to require a minimum distance between protesters and students, claming it impinges on free speech.
“The Mayor revoked the City’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism, together with the City’s order barring discrimination against Israeli entities,” Goldfeder said. “His administration has since confirmed, through the head of its own antisemitism office, that it will use no codified definition of antisemitism, or of any other form of hate.”
He pointed to an April 2026 City Council hearing, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner for legal matters testified that the words “Kill the Zionists” painted on a kosher restaurant might not be charged as a hate crime, and would depend on proof that the motivation was not purely political, while “Kill the Jews” on the same restaurant plainly would be.
“As a member of the Council observed, `Zionist now operates as a proxy for Jew’, and “the city’s posture hands the perpetrator an exit,” the letter said.
“A government that declines to recognize the most common form the hatred now takes has declined, in advance, to police it.”
Goldfeder also said Mamdani directed the NYPD to develop a plan to disband its Strategic Response Group, the unit responsible for protest response and counterterrorism.
The referral said the “mayor’s animus” was also reflected in the activities of city agencies, pointing to an hour-long training for Health and Mental Hygiene Department employees on Feb. 3, 2026 – a “Global Oppression Workshop” about public health in Gaza and the West Bank.
“The presentation consisted primarily of false accusations against Jewish Israelis of `genocide’ and other crimes, and misrepresentations and distortions of Israeli history, society, and law,” the letter said.
“The presentation did not mention Hamas atrocities against Israelis on October 7, 2023, which included the murder of over 1,200 mostly civilian people, torture of children, sexual violence, desecration of human remains, and the kidnapping and torture of over 450 people,”including many American Jews,” Goldfeder said.
“This is powerful proof that New York’s Jews are not a ‘priority community,’ and Jewish municipal workers are not considered ‘colleagues’ in the Mamdani administration,” NJAC’s referral said.
Mamdani’s campaign speech on June 18 referring to the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) as “monsters” the city is “up against,” is the “starkest” example of his hostility to Jews, according to the letter.
“Mamdani (and others) reserve unique contempt for AIPAC not because it represents money in politics, but because it represents Jewish money in politics,” Goldfeder said.
NJAC requested the Justice Department open a “pattern-or-practice investigation” into the city and the NYPD’s response to antisemitic hate crime, including the classification, investigation, prioritization, and resourcing of such crimes.
The Justice Department should press Mamdani and the NYPD to produce the full enforcement “pipeline” for antisemitic hate crime reports, including the number of incidents reported, as well as additional data including the amount that were rejected, reclassified, closed without arrest.
It also asks Justice to examine if the city complies with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which covers entities that receive federal funding.