Louis Farrakhan gives the keynote speech at the Nation of Islam Saviours’ Day convention in Detroit, Michigan, U.S. February 19, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook.

A Manhattan federal court ruled that the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and Simon Wiesenthal Center (SWC) can continue to label comments made by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan as “antisemitic” and dismissed a $4.8 billion defamation lawsuit brought by Farrakhan against the two Jewish organizations.

“We are grateful that the United States judicial system recognized and validated our First Amendment right to confront and speak out against antisemitism by dismissing Louis Farrakhan’s lawsuit and not-so-veiled attempt to silence the SWC and impede our mission,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, SWC’s associate dean and global social action director, said on Monday.

“Unfortunately, the judicial system cannot defeat the antisemitic hate that Farrakhan has spawned and spread throughout America over the last four decades,” Rabbi Cooper added. “SWC will steadfastly uphold its commitment to pursue and to combat the racism and antisemitism that continues to target America’s Blacks and Jews.”

Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam, an Islamic and Black nationalist movement, filed a lawsuit in October 2023 against the SWC, Rabbi Cooper, the ADL and its CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. Farrakhan and NOI claimed that the defendants were defaming them by called their comments antisemitic.

In the past, Farrakhan has compared Jews to termites; described Judaism as a “dirty religion” and a “gutter religion”; called the Jewish people “Satan”; publicly questioned the Holocaust; shared anti-Israel conspiracy theories; and blamed Jews for pedophilia and sex trafficking. In a three-hour speech that he gave in 2020 on Fourth of July, he referred to Jews as “Satan” who should have their brains bashed by the “stone of truth.” Farrakhan is one of three Nation of Islam leaders — the other two being Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammad – and has denied being an antisemite.

SWC argued that it has a constitutional right to comment on what it considers antisemitic hate speech. The organization stated in its brief that the plaintiffs “seek here to rewrite decades of legal precedent and overturn the First Amendment’s protection of free speech.”

Judge Denise Cote in the US Southern District of New York sided with the Jewish groups. She ruled that “the challenged statements referring to Farrakhan as antisemitic are non-actionable statements of opinion. The communications in which they were published contain ‘a recitation of facts on which (they are) based’ – namely direct quotes from Farrakhan.”

SWC’s attorney Julie Gerchik said after winning the dismissal: “We are pleased the Court affirmed the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and recognized the plaintiffs’ transparent effort to weaponize the legal system to intimidate those calling out antisemitism and hate.”