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jared huffman
US Reps. Thompson, Huffman Served in Class Action Suit Over Gaza Genocide
California residents' lawsuit accuses the Democrats of violating their constitutional rights by voting to use their taxes "for the unlawful purpose of being complicit in genocide."
Jan 02, 2025
Two Democratic congressmen from Northern California were served this week with legal documents in a class action lawsuit filed by hundreds of their constituents who argue that the lawmakers illegally forced them into complicity with Israel's genocidal annihilation of Gaza.
Taxpayers Against Genocide (TAG), a group of more than 600 constituents of Reps. Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman represented by the firm Szeto-Wong Law, said it delivered a complaint for declaratory and injunctive relief to the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, where it was received by Deputy General Counsel for the House of Representatives Todd Tatelman.
As Common Dreamsreported, the lawsuit was filed last month in San Francisco.
TAG said in a statement Wednesday that Thompson and Huffman "illegally abused their tax and spend authority when they voted to allocate $26.38 billion in military aid to Israel on April 20, 2024," and that by doing so, they violated the U.S. Constitution, the Genocide Convention, and federal laws.
According to the lawsuit:
Mike Thompson and Jared Huffman exceeded the constitutional limitations on their tax and spend authority by voting to authorize the funding of the Israeli military when they were aware, or should have been aware, that the Israeli military was committing genocide in Gaza, which made their votes a violation of customary international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide. Furthermore, defendants' votes violated multiple other laws and policies, including the Leahy Law, which prohibits aid to foreign security forces that have committed a gross violation of human rights; the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 and Arms Export Control Act, which prohibit assistance to any country in which the government engages in a consistent pattern of gross violations of internationally recognized human rights and require the advancement of U.S. foreign policy interests consistent with internationally recognized human rights; and the Conventional Arms Transfer policy, which prohibits U.S. weapons transfers that risk facilitating or otherwise contributing to violations of human rights or international law. Plaintiffs' constitutional rights to have their taxes collected for only lawful purposes have been and continue to be violated by defendants' votes to use plaintiffs' taxes for the unlawful purpose of being complicit in genocide.
"The moral injuries that I and countless other constituents of Rep. Huffman have suffered resulting from his vote to arm the genocide in Gaza are immeasurable," plaintiff Carol Bloom said on Wednesday.
Judy Talaugon—a plaintiff and an Indigenous elder and activist in Sonoma County—said: "Palestinian children are all our children, deserving of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for systemic change for the betterment of us all."
In an interview with CounterPunchpublished Wednesday, plaintiff Ellen P. said that although Huffman did hold a November 2023 meeting with members of the group Humboldt for Palestine, activists in attendance left disappointed.
"I was aghast at Huffman's response to this thoughtful and heartfelt plea from his constituents," she said. "He repeatedly interrupted speakers, admonished their use of language—even debating with us about the definition of 'genocide' and 'apartheid'—and tried to lecture us rather than listen to us."
"He made it very clear he was not at all interested in anything we had to say and that he is a committed Zionist," she added.
Huffman has not responded publicly to the lawsuit.
Thompson's office responded last month to the suit in a statement asserting that the congressman "understands that it has been the civilian population that has paid the cost of Hamas' terrorist attack on Israel and he remains gravely concerned about the scale of civilian loss in this war."
However, the statement added that "achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won't be accomplished by filing a lawsuit."
United Nations experts, human rights groups, jurists, academics, activists, and others argue that Israel's policies and actions during its 454-day assault on Gaza fit the definition of genocide as described in Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, more commonly called the Genocide Convention.
Backed by over two dozen mostly Global South nations and regional blocs, South Africa is leading a genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. The U.S., which provides Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid and diplomatic cover including United Nations Security Council cease-fire resolution vetoes, is one of around 10 countries—most of them in the Global North—opposing the case.
The year 2025 began with more Israeli killing of Palestinians, including a New Year's Day airstrike massacre at the Jabalia refugee camp that left at least 15 people, including four children and a woman, dead, and a Thursday attack on an Israeli-designated "safe zone" in southern Gaza that reportedly killed at least 11 people, including three children.
According to Gaza officials, at least 45,581 Palestinians have been killed and more than 108,000 others wounded by Israeli attacks, with at least 11,000 people missing and believed dead and buried beneath rubble. The overwhelming majority of Gazans have been forcibly displaced, and hundreds of thousands are suffering starvation and sickness exacerbated by Israel's "complete siege" of the embattled enclave.
TAG plaintiff Norman Solomon wrote in a Thursday opinion piece forCommon Dreams that he whilethat he certainly does not "expect the courts to halt the U.S. policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on," the unprecedented lawsuit "makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government."
As Maria Barakat, a Palestinian-Lebanese American plaintiff in the case said on Thursday, "This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government and our refusal to be complicit."
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What Do We Hope to Achieve by Filing Suit Against US Lawmakers Over Gaza Genocide?
Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide, constituents served notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide anything other than repugnant.
Jan 02, 2025
On the last day of 2024, the deputy general counsel for the House of Representatives formally accepted delivery of a civil summons for two congressmembers from Northern California. More than 600 constituents of Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson have signed on as plaintiffs in a class action accusing them of helping to arm the Israeli military in violation of “international and federal law that prohibits complicity in genocide.”
Whatever the outcome of the lawsuit, it conveys widespread anger and anguish about the ongoing civilian carnage in Gaza that taxpayers have continued to bankroll.
By a wide margin, most Americans favor an arms embargo on Israel while the Gaza war persists. But Huffman and Thompson voted to approve $26.38 billion in military aid for Israel last April, long after the nonstop horrors for civilians in Gaza were evident.
Back in February -- two months before passage of the enormous military aid package -- both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International found that, in the words of the lawsuit, “the Israeli government was systematically starving the people of Gaza through cutting off aid, water, and electricity, by bombing and military occupation, all underwritten by the provision of U.S. military aid and weapons.”
When the known death toll passed 40,000 last summer, the UN’s high commissioner for human rights said: “Most of the dead are women and children. This unimaginable situation is overwhelmingly due to recurring failures by the Israeli Defense Forces to comply with the rules of war.” He described as “deeply shocking” the “scale of the Israeli military’s destruction of homes, hospitals, schools and places of worship.”
No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S. government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congressmembers who are complicit in genocide is a good step.
On Dec. 4, Amnesty International released a 296-page report concluding that Israel has been committing genocide “brazenly, continuously and with total impunity” -- with the “specific intent to destroy Palestinians,” engaging in “prohibited acts under the Genocide Convention.”
Two weeks later, on the same day the lawsuit was filed in federal district court in San Francisco, Human Rights Watch released new findings that “Israeli authorities are responsible for the crime against humanity of extermination and for acts of genocide.”
Responding to the lawsuit, a spokesperson for Thompson said that “achieving peace and securing the safety of civilians won’t be accomplished by filing a lawsuit.” But for well over a year, to no avail, the plaintiffs and many other constituents have been urging him and Huffman to help protect civilians by ending their support for the U.S. pipeline of weapons and ammunition to Israel.
Enabled by that pipeline, the slaughter has continued in Gaza while the appropriators on Capitol Hill work in a kind of bubble. Letters, emails, phone calls, office visits, protests and more have not pierced that bubble. The lawsuit is an effort to break through the routine of indifference.
Like many other congressional Democrats, Huffman and Thompson have prided themselves on standing up against the contempt for facts that Donald Trump and his cohorts flaunt. Yet refusal to acknowledge the facts of civilian decimation in Gaza, with a direct U.S. role, is an extreme form of denial.
“Over the last 14 months I have watched elected officials remain completely unresponsive despite the public’s demands to end the genocide,” said Laurel Krause, a Mendocino County resident who is one of the lawsuit plaintiffs.
Another plaintiff, Leslie Angeline, a Marin County resident who ended a 31-day hunger strike when the lawsuit was filed, said: “I wake each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn’t for my government’s partnership with the Israeli government, this couldn’t continue.”
Such passionate outlooks are a far cry from the words offered by members of Congress who routinely appear to take pride in seeming calm as they discuss government policies. But if their own children’s lives were at stake rather than the lives of Palestinian children in Gaza, they would hardly be so calm. A huge empathy gap is glaring.
In the words of plaintiff Judy Talaugon, a Native American activist in Sonoma County, “Palestinian children are all our children, deserving of our advocacy and support. And their liberation is the catalyst for systemic change for the betterment of us all.”
As a plaintiff, I certainly don’t expect the courts to halt the U.S. policies that have been enabling the horrors in Gaza to go on. But our lawsuit makes a clear case for the moral revulsion that so many Americans feel about the culpability of the U.S. government.
To hardboiled political pros, the heartfelt goal of putting a stop to the arming of the Israeli military for genocide is apt to seem quixotic and dreamy. But it’s easy for politicians to underestimate feelings of moral outrage. As James Baldwin wrote, “Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”
Organizing together under the name Taxpayers Against Genocide, constituents served notice that no amount of rhetoric could make funding of genocide anything other than repugnant. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson are the first members of Congress to face such a lawsuit. They won’t be the last.
In recent days, people from many parts of the United States have contacted Taxpayers Against Genocide (via classactionagainstgenocide@proton.me) to see the full lawsuit and learn about how they can file one against their own member of Congress.
No one should put any trust in the court system to stop the U.S. government from using tax dollars for war. But suing congressmembers who are complicit in genocide is a good step for exposing -- and organizing against -- the power of the warfare state.
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'Unprecedented' Lawsuit Targets 2 US Lawmakers for Backing Israeli Military Aid
"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said one plaintiff.
Dec 20, 2024
More than 500 California residents on Thursday took the latest legal action against U.S. leaders in an effort to stop the government's support for Israel's assault on Gaza, with taxpayers represented by two Democratic U.S. House members filing a class action lawsuit against the lawmakers for voting in favor of Israeli military aid.
The plaintiffs, who are represented by the law firm Szeto-Wong Law, live in 10 counties in Northern California and are represented by Democratic Reps. Jared Huffman and Mike Thompson.
The specific legal tactic being used by the plaintiffs is "unprecedented," according to the group Taxpayers Against Genocide, and hinges on Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of the Israel Security Supplemental Appropriations Act in April.
The funding package allocated $26.28 billion in military aid to Israel, which at the time was six months into its bombardment of Gaza and a near-total blockade on humanitarian aid that was pushing the enclave's population of 2.3 million people toward starvation.
Now, Israel has been attacking Gaza for 440 days, and more than 45,000 Palestinians have been killed since the onslaught began. At least 77 Palestinians were killed in Israeli attacks on Thursday, the same day the class action lawsuit was filed and Doctors Without Borders published a report that detailed how the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have imposed "apocalyptic conditions" on the enclave and how humanitarian workers have seen "clear signs of ethnic cleansing as Palestinians are forcibly displaced, trapped, and bombed."
The plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit argued that Huffman and Thompson's votes in favor of billions of dollars for the IDF abused the lawmakers' "tax and spend" authority and "illegally forced their constituents into being complicit in genocide."
Huffman and Thompson voted for the funding package, the plaintiffs noted, months after the International Court of Justice issued a preliminary ruling in South Africa's genocide case against Israel, finding that Israel's actions had threatened Palestinians' right to be protected from genocide. The case has proceeded for ongoing litigation since the preliminary ruling was announced.
The votes were also taken weeks after Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, issued an extensive report that found Israel was committing acts of genocide in Gaza.
"I trusted Congressman Huffman to call for a cease-fire and to demand that the U.S. follow our own laws in addition to international law," said Robie Tenorio, one of the plaintiffs. "But despite overwhelming documented and corroborated evidence, Congressman Huffman voted in April 2024 to send Israel more offensive weapons, all paid for by U.S. taxpayers."
In March, a month before the vote, Democratic lawmakers urged President Joe Biden to enforce the Humanitarian Aid Corridor Act—Section 620I of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, which prohibits the U.S. from providing military aid to any country that is blocking U.S. humanitarian assistance.
The administration threatened in October to cut off military aid within one month if Israel did not prove that it was allowing in sufficient food, water, medicine, and other relief, but the U.S. State Department did not follow through on the threat despite the U.N.'s finding that conditions had not improved.
In January, the Center for Constitutional Rights sued Biden and members of his Cabinet on behalf of several Palestinian groups and individuals, accusing them of failing to prevent genocide in Gaza. The case was dismissed in July.
The lawsuit filed on Thursday argues that Huffman and Thompson violated the U.S. Constitution, the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and U.S. federal laws.
Norman Solomon, co-founder of the grassroots advocacy group RootsAction, said at a press conference on Thursday that Huffman has consistently said he supports U.S. military aid to Israel because he "opposes antisemitism."
"As a Jewish-American I find that kind of rationale disgusting, outrageous, and sickening," said Solomon.
Leslie Angeline, a plaintiff from Marin County, California and an organizer with the peace group CodePink, wrote at Common Dreams on Thursday about her hunger strike in protest of U.S. support for Israel, which she ended as the lawsuit was announced.
"I want to tell you what 30 days with no food does to a person, and my experience is made easier by the fact that I have a roof over my head, access to clean water, and a certainty that I won't have to flee my home at any moment," Angeline wrote. "The women my age in Gaza are not given the same luxuries."
"I wake up each morning worrying about the genocide that is happening in Gaza, knowing that if it wasn't for my government's partnership with the Israeli government this couldn't continue. Our government is sending billions upon billions of our tax dollars to slaughter innocent children, mothers and fathers, entire families with bombs and artillery funded by our country," she continued. "I understand that 'my trauma' is nothing compared to what the people of Gaza must be suffering. I can't even imagine the horrors they're being forced to live through or die from."
Maria Barakat, a Palestinian-Lebanese American and plaintiff from Sonoma County, said it was significant that hundreds of Californians "feel empowered by the ability to take meaningful action."
"This class action is only the beginning of the people's exercise of power against the violence of the American government," said Barakat, "and our refusal to be complicit."
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