Thursday, Oct. 24, marked a quiet victory for the Cincinnati Jewish community: Two pieces of state legislation to support Jewish students, passed in the last hours of this summer’s Ohio legislative session, came into effect.
There are now three “religious expression days” per year that K-12 students can take off from school without any penalty or need to prove their religiosity. (A similar law already guarantees the same for college students.)
“The school principal shall approve such requests without inquiry into the sincerity of a student’s religious or spiritual belief system,” the law states.
For Jewish kids, that means no more haggling with teachers over missing a test on Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur.
“Most people in our Jewish community are pretty aware that in the fall time, there tends to be a struggle between schools and Jewish students,” said Rabbi Ari Jun, the former director of the Cincinnati Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC).
Jun and the JCRC helped lobby for the law alongside other Jewish communities in the state. (Jun was still with the JCRC when he spoke with Cincy Jewfolk about this year’s Jewish legislative victories.)
“Also significant for a lot of our community members: [students] can’t be penalized in sporting for having missed an academic assignment or a day of school,” Jun said.
That “is something we have seen plenty of times in the community: that a Jewish student will be told, ‘Well, since you missed this day or this test, you can’t compete in this or that event’ – and that will no longer be the case,” he said.
Meanwhile, college students have a host of new mandates to support them thanks to the CAMPUS Act.
Now, Ohio law requires universities to create task forces to address antisemitism and other religious identity-based hatred and make clear procedures for addressing student complaints of harassment; allocates state grant money for safety and interfaith initiatives on campuses; and orders Mike Duffey, the Ohio Chancellor of Higher Education, to create a committee on combating antisemitism and other racial, religious, and ethnic hatred.
These mandates come after the tense, and at times chaotic and violent, post-Oct. 7, 2023, climate at universities across the country. Jewish students have felt threatened amid a wave of anti-Israel protests that regularly includes antisemitism.
The University of Cincinnati has a head start on the requirements, as it announced a task force to combat antisemitism and Islamophobia in February.
“The impetus for this really came from students, particularly – although not exclusively – Jewish students, feeling like there needed to be some proactive measures taken to improve life on campus and make people feel more safe and secure,” said State Rep. Dani Isaacsohn (D-Cincinnati), who worked on passing the CAMPUS Act.
Isaacsohn, one of just three Jewish lawmakers in the Ohio Legislature, is running for re-election in November
Unlike other legislative attempts to address campus issues, the CAMPUS Act avoids crossing First Amendment red lines by telling colleges or students what speech is or isn’t accepted. Notably, the Ohio chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, known for its sensitivity to First Amendment issues, did not oppose the bill.
Instead, the bill is about clarifying policy – including by mandating that universities clearly publicize their approach to when and where protests are allowed so that students and administrators are held accountable to their own rules.
The CAMPUS Act, passed with bipartisan support, is “becoming a model piece of legislation around the country,” said Isaacsohn.
“I had multiple legislators from other states, and also at the federal level, asking me about the bill, because they’re interested in having it as a model for their legislatures or for Congress,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of positive focus on it, because we’re one of the only states in the country that’s been able to get a bill signed into law addressing some of the issues on campus.”
Jewish victories came with remarkable speed and consensus
It’s rare that legislation is introduced, vetted, and passed in the span of one legislative session, as happened with the CAMPUS Act.
Most of the time, passing bills is a years-long advocacy process. The bill mandating three days of religious accommodation for K-12 students, for example, had been introduced in 2023.
But the policy only became law this year when it was suddenly attached to another bill that Republicans intended to pass.
“So many of these things, you sit and you work on them for years in the background, and then suddenly somebody dumps gasoline on it, and it all happens at once,” he said. “It was a very effective year for advocacy, which is a good thing, because we had a lot of very pressing needs this year.”
The timeline for the CAMPUS Act was extra crunched given that it was introduced on May 20, but the House finance committee had the first of three hearings on the bill on June 18 – just eight days before the end of the summer session.
Lawmakers were in a mad scramble to pass a variety of legislation.
“What everybody realized…[was] this couldn’t wait two years” to be passed, said Howie Beigelman, president and CEO of Ohio Jewish Communities, the statewide Jewish advocacy organization. “We needed a response now, because it’s a crisis right now on campus. So we really pushed hard for it.”
Eliana Goldner, a Cincinnati native and junior triple-majoring at The Ohio State University, had a front row seat to the advocacy rush.
She was about a week into her internship (through JVS Careers’ Workum program) with the Cincinnati JCRC when Jun, her supervisor, asked if she wanted to testify in person for the CAMPUS Act on June 20.
Two days later Goldner was in front of the House finance committee, speaking after Jackie Congedo, the CEO of the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, who also testified for the bill.
“I’d never done anything like that before, but I was like, ‘Sure. Why not try it?’” Goldner said. “It was really nerve wracking. I remember talking to my parents. I’m like, ‘What did I sign myself up for?”
When testifying, Goldner emphasized how helpless she and other Jewish students felt against anti-Israel rhetoric and protests on campus. When antisemitic incidents were reported to the university administration, there seemed to be no response.
“I was a little worried [lawmakers] wouldn’t take me seriously, because I was just a college student in a room full of adults,” she said. “But I could tell they were really engaged. And they hit me with some really hard questions too, which I wasn’t expecting, but I’m glad they did, because it allowed me to really show that Jewish college student perspective.”
One of those questions involved SB 83, a controversial higher education bill that in its current form would stop all diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts – which could effectively nullify the CAMPUS Act.
Goldner and Jun declined to comment on SB 83 during the hearing. The bill’s potential effect is still unclear, and for the moment it is stalled in the House without a vote.
“Its negative implications towards the CAMPUS Act is just one in a long list of ways in which Senate Bill 83 would be harmful to higher education,” said Isaacsohn when asked about the bill.
Beigelman, meanwhile, is not concerned.
State Sen. Jerry Cirino (R-Kirtland), “who is the lead sponsor of SB 83 and is the champion of it, has said there is no conflict at all,” Beigelman said.
For Goldner, the important thing is that the CAMPUS Act did pass, giving Jewish college students more support as anti-Israel activism stretches into yet another school year.
“The knowledge that the administration now has training and guidelines and written procedures that they have to follow to investigate these claims that students make, it just automatically eases those feelings of, ‘is it even worth saying anything? Is it even worth doing anything?’” she said.
The legislative win is also a sign of hope and resilience for the Jewish community.
“What every Jewish college student needs right now, is just that sense of empowerment,” Goldner said. “We’re going to keep pushing and we’re going to get through this.”
The 40,000 ft view
For Beigelman, the CAMPUS Act and religious expression days bills are part of a trifecta of Jewish legislative victories alongside a bill, signed into law in 2022, that protects student athletes’ ability to wear religious head coverings like a kippah or hijab.
The three bills, which serve all minorities and religious groups, also show that Jews and Muslims can still find common ground despite tension over Israel.
“There’s always going to be policy areas where we have agreement,” Beigelman said. “It wasn’t official – we didn’t say we want to work with people on this. We happen to be on the same side, and we support each other in that sense. That’s probably a good way to focus on [relationships right now], especially in the legislative area.”
But there are also times when Jewish priorities find strong opposition. One bill that fizzled out quickly this session would have restricted public flyering and banner displays on bridges and overpasses.
Jews in Cincinnati, as in other communities, have been targeted by antisemitic flyers and displays. That includes a banner hung above Columbia Parkway in March that read “Save Ireland from the Jews.”
There are potential First Amendment issues with restricting such speech. But it was the banner restrictions that doomed the bill.
“Those on the far left perceived this as an attack on those who might want to display banners with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian messages,” said Jun, formerly of the JCRC. “Meanwhile, many on the far right were quite upset because this could potentially have stopped them from using banner drops to attack abortion. So there was an unlikely alliance that killed this bill almost right out of the gate.”
Some version of that bill may still reappear in the future. Next year is also a budget year for Ohio, which may involve allocating more money to the safety and interfaith grants the CAMPUS Act set up for university institutions.
For Isaacsohn, working on the CAMPUS Act may lead to future legislative efforts to help college students.
“I tried really hard to center students, both their experiences and their ideas, and so in the process, built really good relationships with student leaders on campuses all over the state,” Isaacsohn said.
“So we’ll continue to be in communication with them about what’s working, what’s not, what issues they see in particular,” he said. “I was inspired by their emphasis that they want efforts to really build bridges across faiths, across backgrounds, and so I will be on the lookout…how [we can] support them in those efforts.”
