Court Rejects Anti-Israel Activist’s Claim Against Major Law Firm For Revoking Job Offer
Court: The firm never promised Chehade a job no matter what she did merely because her actions were taken “as an Arab Muslim woman”
An Arab Muslim woman who sued the prominent law firm Foley & Lardner for revoking its job offer over her anti-Israel activism just had part of her case dismissed by an Illinois federal court.
Georgetown Law School grad Jinan Chehade claims the firm’s director of diversity and inclusion promised her they “valued and supported” her Arab Muslim heritage—a promise she says she relied on when she accepted a job there.
But U.S. District Judge Sharon Johnson Coleman, an Obama appointee, ruled that those assurances didn’t amount to an “unambiguous promise” that her job offer would not be rescinded over her pro-Palestinian activism.
Chehade had worked as a summer clerk at Foley in 2023 and was to begin as a full-time associate at the firm’s Chicago office in late October. In the interim, and following the October 7th attacks on Israel, she began speaking out against the Jewish state on her social media accounts and at an October 11th Chicago City Hall meeting.
Chehade appeared at the meeting wrapped in a keffiyeh to oppose a resolution condemning the Hamas massacre. Though “the Western Zionist-controlled media machine would have you believe” it was an unprovoked attack, she raged, Hamas’s murderous rampage was justified: it was their “legal right” and a “natural response” to “75 years of occupation” by Israel’s “apartheid regime”:
[Full audio of the Chicago City Hall meeting is available here.]
After that rant, Foley apparently thought better of its offer. Ten days later, Chehade claims she was called to its Chicago office, where members of the firm grilled her about her remarks at the meeting, as well her social media posts about the Gaza conflict and her past involvement with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). SJP is the pro-Palestinian student group behind the unauthorized anti-Israel protests and encampments that disrupted daily life on the country’s college campuses over the past year.
Shortly after her meeting with the firm—and the day before she was to start her new job—Foley withdrew its offer.
Chehade sued the law firm this past spring, alleging promissory estoppel: she claimed the diversity and inclusion director’s statements were an “unambiguous promise” that she would not be punished for actions that she took as an Arab Muslim woman in support of her beliefs.
Judge Coleman disagreed. The firm had not promised Chehade “total job protection no matter what she did or said so long as she believed those actions were related to her ethnicity, religion, or association.” To conclude otherwise, the judge wrote, would be like giving Chehade a “get out of jail free card” for any action that she took, even if it violated Foley’s values and policies, due to her status as an Arab Muslim woman.
Speaking of going to jail, the judge may have had in mind Chehade’s arrest for her role in the Chicago O’Hare anti-Israel airport blockade earlier this year. A recent lawsuit alleges that Chehade was a primary organizer of the event and used her own body to help stop the flow of traffic around the airport. She’s a named defendant in that case, which we covered here, brought by the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute on behalf of frustrated motorists stuck in their cars that day.
Chehade was given three weeks to amend her filing, which also alleges discrimination under state and federal law—claims the court did not address in last week’s ruling.
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The law firm had a “director of diversity and inclusion”? Then, let them be victims of their own petard.
You can take Muslims out of their countries but you can take Islam out of a Muslim. Like cancer, it is incurable.
One of life’s constants: No matter when in time, no matter where in the world, find Muslims, find trouble.
Just like taking people out of the Ghetto, many times when I saw potential,
I tried to raise people up. I found that I could improve their skills, but not their attitudes. Every time their crap culture did them in.
This was a very expensive lesson for me.
Promissory Estoppel – have not seen that since law school. How did she justifiably rely to her detriment?
Perhaps, in anticipation of starting work at Foley & Lardner, by not seeking employment elsewhere.
Well, the law firm certainly ducked a bullet – she’d have been trouble there as well.
Did they ever. She has permanent HR problem written all over her. If they had carried on in the hiring she would have been a cancer they would never have been able to get rid of
Always termination for cause
Behavior that pisses off clients is almost always cause for termination.
In this the termination was after the job offer and before the start date.
I agree.
Here the court laid out the four elements of Ms. Chehade’s claim that she had to plead (and later prove), as follows:
The court considered only the first element and held that Ms. Chehade had failed to plead sufficient facts to establish, assuming for the sake of argument that the facts were true, that an unambiguous promise of employment existed.
“The Court finds that there was no unambiguous promise and no
common understanding among the parties to support a promissory estoppel claim.”
In Sandler training, they warn sales people kagainst what our instructor called ‘happy ears syndrome’ – convincing yourself that the prospect gave you a commitment that, upon examination, was no commitment at all.
Simple FAFO
She obviously didn’t consider it to be FA. But she is now starting to FO.
At-will employment state – surely that covers hiring as well.
The surprising part of this is that the judge was appointed by BO. It would not be surprising if Rep. Tlaib(D-Gaza) calls for her impeachment.
(D-Gaza)
Good one, Boss!
Toxic employees are the bane of any company trying to build and maintain a positive and productive place of employment. Best not to hire them at all, or once realizing the mistake, getting rid of them ASAP. They dodged a bullet with this one. It seems to me that many DEI managers are there specifically to bring in toxic employees, and eventually someone else in the firm has to clean up the mess.
They need to terminate their DEI office that’s for sure. Someone in the hiring process should have checked her public social media and found out they were considering a dyed in the wool Jew Hater that would have driven off clients and cost them a boatload.
Exactly what I was going to write. You beat me to the punch.
I think that Jinan Chehade’s legal and professional education was just augmented. There are consequences for actions. She should put that in perspective and move on.
In the sense that there’s no such thing as bad publicity? I hate to think you may be right about that…but you just may be.
In other words, her “valued and supported” Arab Muslim heritage must allow bigotry toward Jews and sundry non-Muslims.
I refer you to
https://xkcd.com/1357/
Pretty pithy, that.
It looks like she was also a dei law school admissio .
Arab Muslim woman? And what would be her home country? How about she get the same treatment as she would get if she was there.
I be it would be less than the second class citizen rating that she would like get if she was in one of the Muslin county.
Her home country would be the USA. According to her current employer’s web site, she was “Born and raised in the Bridgeview (Little Palestine) area of Chicagoland”. So by definition she is getting the same treatment she would get “there”.
I was in Iraq a few years ago for a “conference” when the hotel bar we were drinking in stopped serving us (because we were too drunk after 2 drinks) so one of our “handlers” we were with took us to the Christian part of town to continue drinking.
As he came back with a round of drinks he was saying “I’m Muslim….but not a particularly good Muslim” 😂
Primary estoppel may be applicable if, during the job interview, she professed and made clear her support of massacring Jews.
May be she thought that was understood from her describing herself as an Arab woman. She’s probably unaware of the Arab citizens of Israel who serve in the IDF, hold public office, or publicly advocate for Israel. E.g. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QcATzU09Kiw
Why any company, from law firm to diner, would go DEI, is beyond me. I can understand staying within the laws regarding non-discrimination, etc., but this wokism permeating some companies has destroyed them from within. Just looking at the number of companies that have thrown their programs out because of problems they have had, and it seems the “go woke, go broke” catchphrase might have something behind it.
Ever hear about the “illusion of consensus”? If you believe that everyone is doing something and being an outlier isn’t for you, you just might do very stupid [read: counterproductive] things. Many examples, including such follies as the Dutch tulip bubble, our own tech and housing bubbles, the list goes on.
Oh, Sam over at Amalgamated and John over at Newcorp are getting the best DEI people. If we don’t hurry, we’ll miss the boat.
And so it goes….
Meanwhile, non-stupid people keep doing rational things while quietly getting miles ahead of them.
Never forget: things that can’t go on forever don’t. DEI can’t. And it won’t.
A related problem is pressure from clients who have bought into the perceived consensus, particularly large institutional clients.
Why isn’t she protesting the killing of muslims by other muslims in countries like syria? Selective outrage much?
Being a goose-stepping, obnoxious, rabidly genocidal, bigoted, Jew-hating Muslim supremacist/Islamofascist has negative consequences; at least, in this welcome instance.
Naturally, this twit graduated from Georgetown Law Center. Like Columbia Law and too many other law schools to name, here, that place is a cesspool of Islamofascist/Dhimmi-crat Jew-hate and anti-U.S./western sentiment.
She might have raised doubts about her competence by claiming Hamas had a legal right to attack Israelis on October 7. Just which legal right is it to shoot a woman in the vagina after raping her? Or to shoot toddlers in their cribs?
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