Court throws out Muslim educator’s suit against ADL
Friday, July 11, 2003 | byJOE ESKENAZI
A libel suit filed by a former Muslim educator against the local Anti-Defamation League was dismissed by a San Francisco Superior Court judge last week.
Khadijah Ghafur, the former CEO and superintendent of the now-defunct GateWay Academy Public Charter Schools, claimed regional ADL Director Jonathan Bernstein and board president Gil Serota libeled her in a January, 2002 letter to Delaine Eastin, then the state superintendent of schools. The ADL claimed that Ghafur belonged to an anti-Semitic extremist group.
Ghafur's suit was filed in January of this year.
In the letter, Bernstein cited news reports that the GateWay charter schools may have been teaching Islam in their classrooms. He also stated that Ghafur is the secretary of the Muslims of the Americas, "a virulently anti-Semitic extremist group."
The MOA was founded by El Sheikh Sayyid Mubarik Ali Jilani of Pakistan, the man former Wall Street Journal writer Daniel Pearl was on his way to meet when he was kidnapped and subsequently murdered. Bernstein's letter noted that MOA has allegedly served as a front for the Jilani-founded terror group Jamaat al-Fuqra.
Judge Donald S. Mitchell ruled June 30 that the ADL was within its rights to express the above concerns to a member of the government and then, as a "journalistic organization," to post the letter on its Web site.
The court concurred with ADL lawyers that Ghafur's suit was a SLAPP—strategic litigation against public participation—and made a tentative move to strike the case. Mitchell will issue a final ruling in the near future.
"We, like everyone else, have the right to petition the government on issues of concern to us…and they were trying to stop us from that exercising that right. I'm very pleased the court agreed with our argument," said Bernstein.
"You never really know what's going to happen in a court room, but this is what we expected. We were in no way slandering or defaming anyone. We were basically doing ADL's job of raising concerns about possible church-state violations and connections to violent or hate-motivated activity."
Ghafur could not be reached for comment. Her lawyer, Brian Beckwith, said whether or not his client files an appeal depends upon the rationales within the judge's final ruling. He anticipated that the judge would strike the case in his final ruling and that he would find good reason to appeal that decision.
The Department of Education was already well aware of the situation at GateWay Charter Schools before receiving Bernstein's letter.
Following an investigation, the Fresno Unified School District revoked the charter for GateWay—which operated as many as 14 schools across the state—on Jan. 16, 2002.
In addition to concerns over proselytizing in the class, school district officials were disturbed over GateWay's inability to account for $1.3 million in state money, charging of tuition, not fingerprinting or running background checks on all employees, hiring uncredentialed teachers and convicted felons and setting up schools in buildings that had not passed fire or safety inspections.
Large withdrawals of tens of thousands of dollars from GateWay bank accounts led local police and the FBI to raid the school system.
GateWay also allegedly padded its student numbers in order to receive additional state funds, according to the FUSD. It had submitted a $5.9 million budget for 2002, based on attendance numbers the district felt were highly inflated.
Earlier this year, Ghafur filed a $6.5 million suit against the FUSD, Fresno County Office of Education and the state Department of Education claiming anti-Muslim hysteria led to the revocation of GateWay's charter.
Vagueness in state charter school legislation allowed schools such as GateWay to operate under the auspices of the Fresno Unified School District, yet open up campuses in cities as far away as Oakland. The ADL lobbied for the state to close this loophole in the law, which it did last year.