Jewish Groups Threaten to Sue Somerville, MA, Over Anti-Israel Boycott Ordinance

Jewish Groups Threaten to Sue Somerville, MA, Over Anti-Israel Boycott Ordinance

Jewish legal groups are warning Somerville, Massachusetts, that they are prepared to sue the city if it enacts a proposed anti-Israel boycott ordinance.

The proposed “Ethical Procurement and Investment” ordinance introduced in the City Council on June 11 would prohibit the city from entering into contracts with and investing in entities engaged in “apartheid, genocide, unlawful military occupation, or conduct recognized to constitute systematic violation of international humanitarian law.”

Although the ordinance purports to prohibit all unethical procurement and investment, you know who the target is: the proposed law refers to “Israel’s apartheid, genocide, and illegal occupation of Palestine” in the whereas clauses; and it identifies only “Israel and Palestine” in the operative text as examples of entities with whom business would be forbidden under its terms.

Behind the ordinance is Somerville for Palestine (S4P), the local anti-Israel activist group that formed in the wake of the October 7 Hamas massacre. By January 2024, they scored their first victory: a Gaza ceasefire resolution, the first in Massachusetts. Next, they successfully campaigned for a nonbinding 2025 voter referendum directing the city to divest from companies doing business with Israel, the precursor to the ordinance that has now drawn a litigation threat from two major Jewish organizations.

In their joint letter sent June 18 on behalf of several Jewish citizens of Somerville, the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center urge city officials to reject the “flagrantly unconstitutional” proposed law. They argue the city’s proposal unlawfully intrudes on an area reserved exclusively to the federal government and that it runs afoul of federal laws that support Israel.

The ordinance would also violate the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and its Massachusetts counterpart, the letter says, pointing to evidence of antisemitic hostility at prior city council meetings on a similar measure—including a swastika displayed by a proponent, intimidation of Jewish attendees, and an incident in which one Jewish person was spat upon, and another required a police escort.

The groups argue that such evidence of animus bears directly on the ordinance’s constitutionality.

Somerville is the latest Massachusetts city to court a legal battle over an anti-Israel boycott ordinance. As we covered earlier this year, the cities of Medford and Northampton are both being sued over similar BDS-style measures. However, in those cities, the measures were challenged after they passed, whereas in Somerville, the legal warnings are arriving before the city council has voted to enact the measure.

In fact, those warnings came even earlier in Somerville. The city’s own law department has twice advised its councilors—in November 2024 and again in April 2026—that a BDS-style ordinance is “likely invalid.”

While the groups’ letter doesn’t explicitly say, “See you in court,” its message is clear: If the ordinance is enacted in its current form, the ADL and Brandeis Center are “prepared to pursue all available legal remedies to prevent its enforcement”—that would include a lawsuit like the ones playing out in Medford and Northampton. Only in Somerville, the city would be walking into court with its own attorneys already on record against the anti-Israel boycott ordinance they seek to uphold.

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