Legal Matters in the Jewish community Supplement to Jewish News July 13, 2020 jewishnewsva.org | July 13, 2020 | Legal | Jewish News | 13
PA I D A DV E RTI S E M E N T
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comparing taxes, insurance, and upkeep of a home to the cost of living in a community, the financial benefits are equal or greater than what you would expect. Finally, if you served in the military during wartime or had a spouse who served, you may be eligible for senior living benefits: ★★★
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LEGAL MATTERS
Dear Readers,
L
egal issues confront us all, whether we’re focused on them or not. Some are personal such as when it’s time to write a will, create a trust or purchase a home.
Those are obvious examples—while others are more community-, nationally-, and globally-based, such as when the Supreme Court makes a decision that impacts us in one way or another. Speaking of the U.S. courts, an article on page 21 explains how a federal judge’s ruling impacts Orthodox Jewish camps in New York, and an article on page 20 details a Supreme Court ruling that could force U.S. aid recipients to comply with American policy
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on Israel. Another decision from the Supreme Court on Tuesday, June 30, handed school
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voucher proponents a victory in ruling that a state-run scholarship program funded by
This benefit combined with social security payments and savings often covers the cost of senior living. Ultimately, the formula of how senior living is paid works out to be different for every family. But just like college planning, it is worth the time and effort to choose the right fit and craft a plan that makes sense for you.
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Commonwealth
tax-deductible gifts could not exclude religious schools. This case could impact students and families here in Tidewater. Unfortunately, we ran out of room to print the article, but it can be found on our website, JewishNewsVa.org. Spread throughout this section, we highlight several local attorneys who are all active in Tidewater’s Jewish community. While their practice areas are diverse (and one no longer practices), they share a commitment to Jewish life. We hope you’ll enjoy these ‘at a glance’ profiles. Thank you Valerie Brodsky White, Lenny Weinstein, and Igor Vaserfirer for sharing your thoughts with our readers. The section has more articles that we hope you find of interest, including one about the ADL’s battle with Facebook on page 16. Thank you for reading and stay safe,
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LEGAL MATTERS L E G A L P R OF I L E
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Favorite Jewish Holiday: Yom Kippur Most Memorable Personal Jewish Milestone/Life Cycle Event: Meeting a few of the UJFT folks that helped bring my family to the U.S. Most admired Jewish lawmaker: Henry Kissinger is a favorite of mine, despite being a policymaker rather than a true lawmaker. What trends are you noticing in your field of expertise? Caution and cash are the watchwords of the day. Planning for the next 12-36 months has become something of a mystical experience, so many of our clients are recalibrating their cost structures to enlarge their reserves of cash and cash-equivalents. Holding cash has become critical to both fend off drops in revenue, and, conversely, exploit novel opportunities. Is there a particular Jewish saying or value that you strive to remember in your practice of the law? “The highest form of wisdom is kindness.” With wonderfully notable exceptions, kindness is something that we see less and less often in the professional world. While, as an attorney, I do not have the luxury of always being kind, I strive—as best as I can—to reach for kindness.
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LEGAL MATTERS
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How the ADL went from working with Facebook to leading a boycott against it Ben Sales
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(JTA)—It was when Mark Zuckerberg said he would allow Holocaust denial on his platform that the Anti-Defamation League realized its partnership with Facebook wasn’t working. The social media giant and the Jewish civil rights group had been working together for years to curb hate speech online. In October 2017, Facebook headlined a new ADL initiative to start a Cyberhate Problem-Solving Lab in collaboration with Silicon Valley’s biggest companies. Then, nine months later, Zuckerberg told the tech site Recode that while he personally found Holocaust denial “deeply offensive,” he said, “I don’t believe that our platform should take that down because I think there are things that different people get wrong.” People who monitor anti-Semitism criticized Zuckerberg for what they saw as undeservedly giving anti-Semites the benefit of the doubt — as if they were making an innocent mistake rather than propagating a deliberate lie. That’s when the ADL realized that Facebook wasn’t going to change on its own and needed to be pressured. “Holocaust denial is something that we’ve been talking to Facebook about for I think it’s 11 years at this point,” Daniel Kelley, associate director of the ADL’s Center for Technology and Society, says. “We’ve told them Holocaust denial is hate. It is not misinformation. And they have not only not changed, but in several instances doubled down on treating Holocaust denial as some form of misinformation.” So, the ADL has changed tacks as Facebook, according to ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, “has allowed some of the worst elements of society into our homes and our lives.” After years of seeing the largest social network in the world as a partner, it is now treating Facebook as an adversary.
That shift has culminated in an ADLled campaign urging companies to stop advertising on Facebook for the month of July in collaboration with the NAACP and other civil rights groups. The campaign has attracted a growing list of leading brand names. More than 230 companies have signed onto the pledge, and seen Facebook’s stock dip more than 8%, though it has since rebounded. Apparently shaken by the boycott, Zuckerberg has announced a series of changes to Facebook’s hate speech policies, which he said “come directly from feedback from the civil rights community.” He also pledged to meet with the organizers of the boycott. Facebook’s changes include labeling posts regarding voting access, flagging posts that target immigrants, banning members of the far-right antigovernment Boogaloo movement and placing warnings on hateful or false posts from public figures that the network still feels are newsworthy. “I’m committed to making sure Facebook remains a place where people can use their voice to discuss important issues, because I believe we can make more progress when we hear each other,” Zuckerberg wrote in a Facebook post. “But I also stand against hate, or anything that incites violence or suppresses voting, and we’re committed to removing that no matter where it comes from.” Those moves have not lessened the ADL’s commitment to pressuring the company, which makes nearly its entire $70 billion in annual revenue through ads. “Facebook says it will take meaningful steps to address the hate on its platform,” Greenblatt tweeted after the announcement. “We’ve been down this road. Don’t let them refuel for another hate-filled trip.” Fighting tech companies is a change for Greenblatt, who came to the ADL job in 2015 following a career as a social entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. Greenblatt founded a bottled water company that
LEGAL MATTERS donated a portion of its proceeds to clean-water access, as well as All for Good, an open-source platform that aggregated volunteer opportunities online. The ADL had been pushing tech companies to get more serious about combating anti-Semitism for decades. Greenblatt’s predecessor, Abraham Foxman, complained in a 2013 interview with JTA about “the geniuses at Palo Alto” and said, “The providers need to take greater ownership. They don’t want regulation.” Under Greenblatt, the ADL increased its focus on tech, and at first tried to curb online hate through partnership. The group expanded its presence in Silicon Valley in 2016 and founded the Center for Technology and Society in 2017 to combat cyberhate. Greenblatt said he hoped “to collaborate even closer on the threat with the tech industry.” Later that year, the ADL announced its partnership with four tech giants— Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Twitter
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—to create the Cyberhate ProblemSolving Lab. The idea was to work with the companies on technical solutions to improve detection and removal of hateful posts, with the ADL providing guidance on how to spot bigotry and address it. But according to Kelley, the effort went nowhere. Facebook, he said, never acted on any of the advice provided by the ADL. “They were happy to sign onto a press release and to say, well, we’re working with ADL. We did have several meetings,” Kelley says. “It’s the same story of us coming to the meeting with real ideas for how to approach the problems on their platform and them walking away not promising anything. We tried to work with them.” Facebook did not respond to an email request for comment. But the company has disputed that it has a poor record on addressing hateful posts. It points to a recent study from the European Union showing that Facebook is the quickest
among the major social media platforms in addressing notifications of hate speech coming from European users. It found that Facebook assessed 96% of the notifications of hate speech within 24 hours, compared to 76.6% for Twitter. Facebook removed 87.6% of the flagged content, compared to 35.9% for Twitter. But Kelley says that while Facebook does release transparency reports, it does not give outside researchers access to the data, unlike Twitter. So, he says there’s no real way to confirm Facebook’s claims of transparency. “All these statistics are not vetted by, or verified by, any third party,” he says, adding later that “The ability to do real research into the nature of hate on Facebook is extremely limited.” As months and then years passed, activists in Myanmar and elsewhere were complaining that Facebook was allowing public officials to encourage human rights violations. In 2018, the shooter at the New
“They were happy to sign onto a press release and to say, well, we’re working with ADL. We did have several meetings,”
Zealand mosques livestreamed the massacre on Facebook. But while Facebook made some modifications to its hate speech policies, it did not appear to change course philosophically. In October, Zuckerberg said in an address at Georgetown University that he continued on page 18
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LEGAL MATTERS continued from page 17
was proud that “our values at Facebook are inspired by the American tradition, which is more supportive of free expression than anywhere else.” Using the speech, the Jewish comedian Sacha Baron Cohen compared Zuckerberg to a restaurateur gladly serving neo-Nazis. “If he owned a fancy restaurant and four neo-Nazis came goose-stepping into the dining room and were talking loudly about wanting to kill ‘Jewish scum,’ would he serve them an elegant eight course meal? Or would he tell them to get the f*** out of his restaurant?” Cohen wrote. “He has every legal right, indeed a moral duty, to tell them to get the f*** out of his restaurant.” A month later, the ADL gave Cohen its International Leadership Award. The comic actor used the opportunity to give a keynote address to excoriate social media companies. “I say, let’s also hold these companies
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responsible for those who use their sites to advocate for the mass murder of children because of their race or religion,” he said. “Maybe it’s time to tell Mark Zuckerberg and the CEOs of these companies: You already allowed one foreign power to interfere in our elections, you already facilitated one genocide in Myanmar, do it again and you go to jail.” A wrinkle in this story came a few weeks before Cohen’s speech. Following the October attack on a synagogue in Halle, Germany, the ADL accepted a
“Certain powerful private entities— particularly social networking sites — can limit, control, and censor speech as much or more than governmental entities”
$2.5 million donation from Facebook’s COO, Sheryl Sandberg. Greenblatt said, upon accepting the donation, that he was “grateful for her commitment to fighting hate in all of its forms.” Sandberg posted on Facebook that “It means so much to me to be able to support this vital work at this critical moment.” Facebook’s mostly hands-off approach to posts does have notable defenders. David Hudson, an advocate of expansive First Amendment rights, said that free speech protections should be extended to Facebook because its size and breadth gives Facebook the power of a government. “Certain powerful private
LEGAL MATTERS entities—particularly social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and others—can limit, control, and censor speech as much or more than governmental entities,” he wrote for the American Bar Association’s Human Rights magazine. “A society that cares for the protection of free expression needs to recognize that the time has come to extend the reach of the First Amendment to cover these powerful, private entities that have ushered in a revolution in terms of communication capabilities.” But Holocaust scholar Deborah Lipstadt, who spoke out against Zuckerberg’s remarks on Holocaust denial, says a boycott was the right way to go. “Facebook is a private entity and no private entity is obligated to post hate speech,” she saysd. “Generally, I don’t like boycotts, but if this is the only thing to which Facebook is going to respond, then you have no other choice. You can choose where you put your money.” This year, in testimony to Congress, Greenblatt cited his work in Silicon Valley in calling on tech companies to work harder. He called tech “an amplifier, an organizer, and a catalyst for some of the worst types of hate in our society,” and said Facebook and Twitter “need to apply the same energy to protecting vulnerable users that they apply to protect their profits.” Despite the measures Facebook has taken, the ADL says that hasn’t happened. And that’s why, after years of trying to collaborate with Facebook, the ADL is now trying to disrupt its revenue stream in the hopes of forcing change. “There’s a common understanding that Facebook is a company that puts revenue above all else, but I think this is a very clear-cut example,” the ADL’s Kelley says. “All of these changes, the minor tweaks that Mark Zuckerberg announced, were things that the civil rights community have been asking for for years, in addition to larger structural changes to the platform. “It took a massive pause on advertisement by major companies to get them to move an inch.”
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LEGAL MATTERS
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Supreme Court ruling could force foreign recipients of US aid to follow American policy on Israel Ron Kampeas
WASHINGTON (JTA)—A U.S. Supreme Court decision in a case about NGOs, HIV-AIDS funding, and prostitution could force U.S. aid recipients to comply with American policy on Israel. Foreign nonprofits must hew to U.S. government dictates to receive the money, the high court ruled. “As foreign organizations operating abroad, plaintiffs’ foreign affiliates possess no rights under the First Amendment,” said the 5–3 decision written by Justice Brett Kavanaugh. The case was brought by a group of NGOs contesting the Trump administration’s requirement that they explicitly oppose sex trafficking and prostitution as a condition for receiving funds to combat HIV-AIDS overseas from the U.S. Agency for International Development. The NGOs argued that the requirement violates speech freedoms and inhibits their ability to reach those who need their assistance.
The case could have implications for nonprofits in the Middle East that the U.S. government considers to be not sufficiently in line with its Israel policies. In May, Kavanaugh appeared during oral arguments to anticipate repercussions a decision would have on such groups. “Suppose the U.S. government wants to fund foreign NGOs that support peace in the Middle East but only if the NGOs explicitly recognize Israel as a legitimate state,” Kavanaugh asked the plaintiffs. “Are you saying the U.S. can’t impose that kind of speech restriction on foreign NGOs that are affiliated with U.S. organizations?” A 2013 Supreme Court decision ruled that U.S. NGOs were protected by speech freedoms. This case decided whether those freedoms extended to foreign affiliates. Justice Elena Kagan recused herself from the decision because as solicitor general in the Obama administration, she had helped prepare the government’s arguments in the 2013 case.
Brazil’s first Jewish Supreme Court justice to become the high court’s first president Marcus M. Gilban
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RIO DE JANEIRO (JTA)—Luiz Fux, the first Jewish justice on Brazil’s highest court, will be its first Jewish president. Brazil rotates the top post among its 11 justices on the Federal Supreme Court every two years. Fux will take the post in September. “I will always strive for moral values, republican values, the struggle for democracy,” Fux, 67, said last month in a speech. “May God protect me.” The Rio native’s grandparents fled Romania during World War II. His grandmother is a former president of the Israelite Children’s Home in Rio. “It’s a great pride for the Brazilian Jewish community to have Luiz Fux at the head of the Supreme Court,” Fernando Lottenberg, president of the Brazilian Israelite Confederation, says. “He has deep legal knowledge and well-known
humanism, in line with the Jewish tradition of valuing knowledge and life.” Supreme Court justices are appointed by the president. Fux was nominated in 2011 by Dilma Rousseff, who was impeached and later removed from office in 2016. The court decides constitutional and other matters, as well as final appeals. In 2013, Luis Roberto Barroso became the court’s second Jewish member. Last month, he assumed the presidency of the Superior Electoral Court. Fux is a former judge of the Superior Court of Justice and presided over a commission that forged Brazil’s new Civil Process Code. He also is a writer and professor at prestigious universities. In 2014, he was the keynote speaker at the Jewish confederation’s annual convention. In 2009, he received the Theodor Herzl Trophy, which is given by the Rio Jewish Federation and the Israeli Embassy to distinguished Jews.
LEGAL MATTERS
Orthodox Jewish camps won’t be allowed to open as US judge sides with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo Shira Hanau
A
last-ditch effort by Orthodox Jews in New York to clear the way for overnight camps this summer fell short Monday, July 6 as a federal judge declined to intervene against Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to keep the camps closed. The judge was responding to a lawsuit brought last month by the Association of Jewish Camp Operators, which represents Orthodox camps. By banning overnight camps while allowing day camps and protests, the suit argued, Cuomo was privileging some activities over others—a potential violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment. The camp organization, represented by the prominent Orthodox lawyer Avi Schick, sought a restraining order that would allow camps to operate while that legal question made its way through the courts. But Judge Glenn Suddaby of the U.S. District Court in upstate New York said the suit’s religious liberty argument was not immediately compelling. “Overall, Plaintiffs have failed to show that Defendant’s executive orders were taken because of, not merely in spite of, their religious practice,” he wrote in his decision. Cuomo has allowed day camps to open with restrictions, while other states have allowed overnight camps. Some Orthodox camps have opened outside of New York, with some even relocating because of the rule. The camp association claims that sleep away camps can be opened safely despite the pandemic and in May shared a safety plan with the governor detailing the protocols the camps would follow. The plan also provided studies that showed a low rate of serious cases in children and teenagers. That, too, did not sway the judge. “The fact that Plaintiffs have maintained a hope and willingness to operate or send their children to overnight camps this summer longer than most persons involved with secular or non-Jewish
overnight camps does not somehow turn Defendant’s facially neutral executive order into impermissible targeting,” Suddaby wrote. Agudath Israel, an organization representing haredi Orthodox Jews in America and which supports the Association of Jewish Camp Operators, expressed its disappointment over the decision. “The impact on children is devastating,” Rabbi Yeruchim Silber, Agudah’s director of government relations in New York, said in a statement. “Instead of looking forward to a summer of growth, filled with learning experiences and preparation for an upcoming school year, many children of our community will now be forced to endure a continuation of the long-lasting lockdowns imposed by the State Government.”
Orthodox summer camps typically include a substantial educational component, with children studying Jewish subjects in classes in the morning with more typical camp activities coming later in the day. The summer camps issue has been one in a series of faceoffs between the Orthodox community and New York’s elected officials during the pandemic. The battles—over access to city playgrounds, religious services and now summer camps—have rested on a common thread: The Orthodox community has seen a double standard in the government officials’ restrictions, with one set of rules applied to activities the officials deem essential and another set to those they do not. The lawsuit comes on the heels of
another suit, brought earlier last month by three Orthodox men and two Catholics against New York State and City officials, that challenged the state’s restrictions on religious gatherings. In that case, a federal judge did issue a preliminary injunction last month, concluding that the limits on capacity placed on houses of worship could not be lower than other gathering places and that capacity gatherings could not be placed on outdoor services. The judge said that allowing and encouraging thousands of people to gather for protests “sent a clear message that mass protests are deserving of preferential treatment,” echoing a complaint lodged by members of the Orthodox community. (JTA)
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LEGAL MATTERS L E GAL P ROF I L E
Valerie Brodsky White
president of fundraising. And way back in the day, I was on the board of Jewish Family Service and was happy to give some immigration guidance to Russian Jewish families.
Firm: Retired from private law practice; “In-House Counsel” for Matval Enterprises, LLC, our real estate investment business that I set up with my husband, Matthew.
Favorite Jewish Holiday: I always host Break the Fast on Yom Kippur and the Passover Seder so those are my favorites. I love putting together a beautiful table— pulling out all the fine china and special linens—and just the whole process. Having the family together cooking, preparing, and all that craziness is wonderful! We did a Skype Passover this year with just the “kids” home with us, and my parents online. Next year…My Dining Room (or Jerusalem, your choice)!
Specialty: Practiced Immigration Law for 17 years; then worked part-time in Real Estate Law in our family firm for 8 years. Education: Bachelor of Business Administration and J.D. from The College of William and Mary. Family: Matthew White (husband); Sara (27) and Rachel (23); and a 5 lb. tiny toy poodle named Oreo
Valerie Brodsky White
Jewish Organizations: I have been on the board of the Holocaust Commission for years and years serving in a variety of roles including chair of Book Club for 8 years, co-chair of Yom Hashoah, and co-chair of the What We Carry education program. I also served on the board of Temple Israel for several years including as vice
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Most Memorable Personal Jewish Milestone/Life Cycle Event: Marrying Matthew White at Temple Israel in 2003 under the Chuppah in a traditional Jewish ceremony. It was such a family celebration and I was so proud to join the TI community where my father-in-law, Samuel I. White (of blessed memory), was a past president. Unbeknownst to us at that time, my step-father, Jonathan Longman, would also serve as president of Temple Israel (2017–2020) with my mother, Linda Longman, right by his side (I call her the shadow president!). And to have both of my girls celebrate their Bat Mitzvahs in that same sanctuary was also very special. Most admired Jewish lawmaker: Without question, Ruth Bader Ginsburg! No explanation required. I pray for her good health every day. What trends are you noticing in your field of expertise? Both of my areas of practice, immigration law and real estate law, are facing serious challenges. I am still friendly with my old partners from my immigration practice days and it is difficult for them right now. The barriers to immigrants have always been immense—and not always logical—but now it is downright hostile. As for real estate law, I am personally focused on landlord-tenant and the political landscape in that arena has shifted with moratoriums on evictions and many new tenant rights coming into law. Sadly, the law of unintended consequences seems to be rearing its head as the inventory of single family rentals is so low in some areas (due to the inability to evict and Coronavirus), that rental rates have gone up for the units that are available. Many landlords are instituting much stricter rental criteria and are unwilling to take a risk on a borderline tenant. I have used my time in lockdown to participate in online continuing legal education and Meet-ups on real estate and landlord-tenant issues, locally and nationally, as it is so important to ensure legal compliance and to understand the marketplace. How has your understanding and/or commitment to Jewish values entered into your decisions or actions as an attorney? My father, Sidney Jacobson, was also an attorney and a CPA and he emphasized throughout my life the importance of integrity in all that you do. I followed his lead and was always responsive, direct, and forthright with my clients, and I am the same with my tenants. Respond to questions, concerns, and complaints immediately. Even if you don’t have the answer, respond; even if they won’t like your answer, respond. People will forgive almost anything except being ignored. When I built my immigration practice, people asked me, how did you do it? Simple, I answered my phone and did the work on my desk. It really is that simple, respond to people, do what you promise, and be fair.
LEGAL MATTERS L E G A L P R OF I L E
Leonard (“Lenny”) J. Weinstein Firm: Clayton, McKay & Bailey, PC Specialty: Intellectual Property–Patent and Trademark Prosecution and Litigation Education: 2002 BS Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology 2012 JD, George Washington University Law School Family: Wife, Luisa Betancourt Weinstein Son, Maxwell Jacobo Weinstein (2 yrs) Daughter, Arianna Sofia Weinstein (1 month) Jewish Organizations: UJFT Society of Professionals, Nadiv Favorite Jewish Holiday: Passover
Leonard (“Lenny”) J. Weinstein
Most Memorable Personal Jewish Milestone/ Life Cycle Event: Hebrew naming of my son, Ari Sariyd Chacad Most admired Jewish lawmaker: Louis Brandeis What trends are you noticing in intellectual property law—your field of expertise? Increasingly, more companies, including large corporations, are seeking out intellectual property legal services from law firms that are largely virtual-based. These companies are finding that virtual firms can provide the same level of expertise and quality of work they expect from big law firms of more than 300 attorneys or intellectual property boutiques. This trend appears to be a result of the same attorneys once part of those large law firms now practicing for virtual firms and being to able charge lower fees due to the reduced overhead that comes with operating virtually (as well as remotely). How has your understanding and/or commitment to Jewish values entered into your decisions or actions as an attorney? The values that I have always associated with Judaism, and believe that my parents and my Rabbi tried to instill in me through religion, are integrity and respect. I chose intellectual property as my area of practice because it lends itself to objectivity, and is perhaps, as far removed from issues of integrity as any other practice of law. My clients range from large fortune 500 companies to independent inventors literally working from their garages on their inventions. From the day I started practicing law, I have always respected and been willing to listen to individuals or companies about their ideas. Providing an honest assessment of the potential of obtaining patent or trademark protection before a formal engagement is ever discussed is, in my mind, a way of showing respect, and made it an indispensable part of my practice.
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