S.4576 – Jewish American Security Act
S.4576 was introduced May 19th by Senator Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Senator James Lankford (R-OK). It is currently pending before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and has seven co-sponsors on a bipartisan basis.
Related legislation: H.R.6806 (119th Congress), H.R. 1007 (119th Congress), S.558 (119th Congress), H.R. 5001 (19th Congress), H.R. 6186 (119th Congress), H.R. 1033 (119th Congress)
Bill Summary: S.4576 attempts to significantly expand the authority, funding, and mandates of established civil rights and security frameworks, specifically for Jewish American communities. The Bill proposes major expansions under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, codifying components of past executive orders including the controversial EO 13899, as well as expanding institutional requirements under the law for recipients of federal aid, including mandating colleges establish Title VI coordinators and expanding data collection.
The Bill also enhances security and policing at “at-risk religious institutions” by drastically expanding the Nonprofit Security Grants Program (which is disproportionately distributed to Jewish religious/communal institutions) by nearly tripling its funding, doubling the percentage of funding allowed to be used for administrative costs, and expanding the definition of allowable costs so funding can be used for security personnel as well as infrastructure projects.
Lastly, the Bill creates new mandates across media and technology, requiring an entirely new compliance scheme that forces new disclosures for private social media companies, and requires the FBI, DHS, and the National Counterterrorism Center to develop joint annual reports tracking online online domestic and transnational extremism specifically targeted toward Jewish Americans.
Context: The United States is at its best as a thriving multiethnic democracy that protects the rights of all its citizens, including Jewish Americans, to practice their religious and cultural traditions safely and freely. Jewish communities are vulnerable when those democratic foundations are under attack. Therefore, any legislation aimed at fighting antisemitism should do so by creating and strengthening resources that protect all marginalized communities instead of isolating one particular community at the expense of others. Legislation designed and named to develop unique security protections for a singular community undermines the purpose of our civil rights framework and principles.
This Bill would undermine the principles of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by offering elevated status for Jewish Americans above other protected groups. In numerous instances, S.4576 expands protections under the law exclusively on Jewish Americans — with federal policy, processes, and programs created only to address segmented instances of hate and discrimination. This is a choice, and one made in a time of rising religious-based discrimination across religions, including the May 18th deadly attack on the Islamic Center of San Diego that occurred the day before S.4576 was introduced. Mandating coordinators and requiring reports and threat assessments responsive to only one type of religion/shared ancestry-based discrimination undermines the framework of our civil rights protections and the original intent of Title VI’s to provide equal protection to all marginalized communities. Even efforts to establish Title VI coordinators across institutions of higher education, which could be applied broadly to all communities, are undermined by this Bill’s exclusive focus on antisemitism, which signals to covered entities that the primary concern of these coordinators is a single community over the whole.
The Bill reinforces President Trump’s December 2019 Executive Order 13899, which implemented the IHRA definition and examples of antisemitism, providing an overly broad and highly politicized definition that has been pushed by major pro-Israel organizations despite significant concerns raised by scholars. The definition’s original lead drafter, Kenneth Stern, testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee asserting the definition is inappropriate for legislation, warning it would be used to silence speech. An earlier draft of S.4576 attempted to explicitly enshrine parts of Trump’s 2019 Executive Order into law. While this provision was removed from the final version, the reference to the IHRA definition in its findings, and the original inclusion demonstrates the Bill’s conflationary intent.
The Bill also compels social media companies to detect, remove, and otherwise limit content determined to be antisemitic through mandating public transparency reports about the moderation of such content. Social media companies already repress Palestinian voices on their platforms. For example, the Human Rights Campaign has found that Meta engages in systemic online censorship, documenting 1,050 takedowns and other suppression of peaceful content posted by Palestinians and their supporters on Instagram and Facebook, including about human rights abuses. This Bill will inevitably codify such suppression. At a time when we need robust safeguards for free speech and protections for all people who face religious, ethnic, and racial discrimination, this legislation’s focus exclusively on antisemitism under politicized understandings will have the opposite effect of chilling online free speech and neglecting other targets of hateful speech.
American Values Analysis: Justice Brandeis wrote that “Fear of serious injury cannot alone justify suppression of free speech and assembly.” S.4576’s exclusive focus on Jewish Americans at a time when Americans across religious and ethnic identities are facing threats challenges America’s vision of itself as a democracy that preserves the Constitutional right to free speech and delivers equal protections to all of its citizenry.
American Interest Analysis: Suppressing legitimate debate weakens U.S. democratic institutions and harms America’s moral authority abroad as we routinely criticize censorship in authoritarian states. It is in American interests to preserve and strengthen the Civil Rights Act as a foundation for our commitment to equal rights for those of all religions and ethnic backgrounds, not fragment it to apply protections unequally to certain communities. By fracturing the Civil Rights Act, this Bill will undermine the safety of all Americans, including Jewish Americans, who depend on its assurance of equal protections.
A New Policy’s Recommendation: OPPOSE
A New Policy opposes S.4576 because the reports and threat assessments it aims to produce about antisemitism will be confounded by the conflation of antisemitism and anti-Israel sentiment that it espouses, and the security measures it proposes must apply equally to all those at risk for discrimination based on religion/shared ancestry.
For more information please contact: Tariq Habash, (202) 770-0055, info@anewpolicy.org
