Alleging conflicts, California judge boots Jewish district attorney from trying Stanford pro-Palestinian protesters

JTA – Jewish groups in the Bay Area are protesting a judge’s removal of a local Jewish district attorney from a case involving pro-Palestinian protesters accused of vandalising Stanford University’s president’s office. 

The district attorney, Jeff Rosen, was disqualified from retrying a felony case against five protesters after the judge ruled that Rosen had crossed a legal line when suggesting in a campaign message that the protest was antisemitic. 

“Rosen is allowed to take a strong stance against crime in the community, against antisemitism. But caution and care need to be taken when utilising active litigation in campaign communication,” Judge Kelley Paul said from the bench. 

The judge said Rosen had erred when publicly labelling the incident antisemitic when it was not charged as a hate crime. 

“This case is not a hate crime,” Paul said. “The characterisation of the prosecution as a fight against antisemitism runs afoul of case law.” 

In an email to J. The Jewish News of Northern California, Rosen’s office wrote that while it “disagrees with the judge’s ruling, we respect it”. 

In a joint statement, the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) Bay Area and Jewish Silicon Valley wrote that they are “deeply troubled” by Paul’s decision and that the case “must proceed”. 

“This decision uniquely targets minority prosecutors, suggesting they are incapable of pursuing justice in cases perceived to be impacting their own communities,” the statement says, adding that it “risks reinforcing long-standing antisemitic prejudices and invites future defendants to weaponise a prosecutor’s identity against them”. 

The five protesters face felony vandalism and conspiracy counts stemming from a June 2024 protest in which 13 people broke into Stanford’s executive offices and caused an estimated $300 000 in damages. A jury deadlocked in February, splitting 9-3 on the vandalism count and 8-4 on conspiracy. Rosen quickly announced his plan to retry them. 

The disqualification motion was filed by deputy public defender Avi Singh, who argued that Rosen had compromised his office’s neutrality by featuring the prosecution on a campaign fundraising page titled “DA Rosen fighting antisemitism”, alongside a donation button. 

Singh argued that the fundraising campaign falsely implied that the defendants were antisemitic. None was charged with a hate crime. 

Rosen, who has spoken publicly about his commitment to fighting antisemitism and supporting Israel, has denied any conflict of interest. 

In her decision, Paul pointed to Rosen’s remarks in a March 2025 speech he gave for the San Jose Hillel, about a month before his office filed charges against the protesters. A video of the speech is linked on the “Fighting Antisemitism” page on his campaign website. 

In the speech, Rosen equated antisemitism and “anti-Americanism”, a phrase that deputy district attorney Robert Baker also used to describe the conduct of the protesters during the trial’s closing arguments. Paul ruled that the similarities in the language disqualified the entire DA’s office from the case, not just Rosen. 

In their own statement, the local Jewish groups suggested Rosen was being disqualified because he is Jewish. 

“Generations of American Jews in positions of public trust have all too often been treated as suspect or inherently conflicted,” JCRC Bay Area and Jewish Silicon Valley said. “This decision risks reinforcing long-standing antisemitic prejudices and invites future defendants to weaponise a prosecutor’s identity against them, casting any public opposition to hate as grounds for disqualification.” 

Rosen’s challenger in his June primary election, former prosecutor Daniel Chung, has turned the ruling into a campaign video. Chung called Rosen’s pursuit of the Stanford case “overzealous” and “a waste of time and money”. 

“This is a humiliating loss for DA Rosen and his entire office,” Chung said in an Instagram video. “For years, millions of dollars have been spent trying to prosecute Stanford student protesters with felony charges.” Rosen’s actions, Chung said, “jeopardised the due process of the defendants” and “exemplifies the undermining of integrity, competence, and compassion under DA Rosen for the last 16 years”. 

The ruling hands the case to California’s attorney-general, which will decide whether to retry the defendants ‒ German Gonzalez, Maya Burke, Taylor McCann, Hunter Taylor-Black, and Amy Zhai ‒ or drop the charges. 

• This story originally appeared in J. The Jewish News of Northern California.