Microsoft faces ultimatum from lawyers: Address ‘widespread antisemitism’ or we’ll see you in court

Microsoft, the Brandeis Center wrote in its letter, objects to a Jewish ERG because it characterizes Jews as a religious group, not an ethnic one.

By Alana Goodman, The Washington Free Beacon

A legal organization accused Microsoft of violating federal anti-discrimination laws and contributing to “widespread anti-Semitism” in its workplace, warning it will sue unless the tech giant fixes the problem.

The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under the Law wrote in a Monday letter to Microsoft that its refusal to allow employees of all races and ethnicities—including Jews—to establish resource groups is illegal.

Microsoft currently funds nine Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), which host educational events and provide a channel through which employees can communicate concerns about workplace discrimination to corporate leadership.

Existing ERGs include “Asians at Microsoft,” “Blacks at Microsoft,” “Hispanic and Latinx Organization of Leaders in Action,” and “Indigenous at Microsoft.”

Brandeis Center director of corporate initiatives and senior counsel Rory Lancman wrote in the letter that the climate at Microsoft demonstrates why the lack of a Jewish ERG—which would help resolve issues of anti-Semitism—is an issue.

An “Interfaith ERG” at Microsoft included non-Jewish employees who told their Jewish coworkers that they “should expect people to blame Jews for what Israel was doing” and that they should stop complaining about anti-Semitism because “Christians and Arabs face more and worse in the world” and “there were so many countries where Jews were the majority,” Lancman noted.

Immediately after Hamas’s October 7 attack against Israel, Microsoft employees used the company’s internal messaging platform to write slogans like “from the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” accuse Israel of being an apartheid state, and deny a Jewish right to self-determination, according to Lancman.

The Brandeis Center pointed to other incidents in the letter, including graffiti on campus, inappropriate speakers at employee events, and anti-Israel protests and disruptions, arguing that company policy has left Jewish employees at a disadvantage and “allowed anti-Semitism to fester at Microsoft.”

The Brandeis Center asserted that Microsoft is discriminating against employees who do not fall under any of the nine ERG categories.

“Jewish and non-Jewish employees must be provided ERGs on the same terms and conditions as other employees at Microsoft regardless of t heir ethnicity or shared ancestry,” the letter reads. “It’s the right thing to do, and it’s the law.”

Lancman told the Washington Free Beacon that Jewish employees desire their own ERGs because “they don’t feel they have the tools to effectively address” workplace anti-Semitism, noting that diversity, equity, and inclusion offices are often responsible for “encouraging or fomenting that anti-Semitism.”

Microsoft, the Brandeis Center wrote in its letter, objects to a Jewish ERG because it characterizes Jews as a religious group, not an ethnic one.

Lancman, describing an “unwillingness of corporate America to accept Jewish identity on the terms that their Jewish employees understand Jewish identity,” told the Free Beacon that the law is clear.

“Jews are an ethnicity under the law, and ethnicities are protected by federal, state, and local anti discrimination laws,” he added. “So our message to Microsoft is, insofar as you’re going to have ethnicity-based employee resource groups, then you need to allow your Jewish employees to have them.”