The ZOA Center for Law and Justice (ZOA-CLJ) was established to meet the need for greater organizational involvement in legal matters that affect relations among the United States, Israel and the Jewish people.

• ZOA’s campaign led Broadway Cares – the theater community’s response to those affected by life-threatening illnesses – to make $400,000 in grants to institutions providing on-the-ground support to Israelis after the Hamas massacre on October 7, 2023.
• ZOA filed suit against officials in the Cherry Hill (NJ) public school district, based on their failure to effectively respond to the threats and harassment that a Jewish student endured after October 7, and based on their own harassing and retaliatory conduct toward the Jewish student, in violation of federal and state law.
• The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights is investigating ZOA’s Title VI complaints against Rutgers University, Duke University, and the Fairfax County Public Schools, one of the largest public school districts in the U.S.
• Particularly after October 7, with antisemitism surging at alarming levels, the ZOA has redoubled its efforts to protect the civil rights of Jewish and pro-Israel students across the U.S., including at the University of Central Florida, Miami University (in Ohio), Emerson College (in Boston), UC Santa Barbara, UC Davis, West Virginia University, and Montgomery County Public Schools, the largest public school district in Maryland
• In February 2023, ZOA filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in a case alleging work-place discrimination, urging more workplace protections for observant Jews and other employees who require religious accommodations from their employers.  We were victorious. (For more information click here)
• In October 2023 (ironically the day before the Hamas massacre), the ZOA filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court in support of American victims of terrorism who live in the Gaza envelope, the southern region of Israel near the Gaza border.
• In August 2024, the ZOA filed an amicus brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, in support faculty members at the City University of New York, almost all of whom are Jews.  The CUNY faculty members claim that the state should be prohibited under the First Amendment from compelling them to accept as their spokesperson a union whose antisemitic views and positions are abhorrent to them.
• We work to educate the American public and Congress about legal issues in order to advance the interests of Israel and the Jewish people.
• We assist American victims of terrorism in vindicating their rights under the law, and seek to hold terrorists and sponsors of terrorism accountable for their actions.
• We fight anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias in the media and on college campuses.
• We strive to enforce existing law and also to create new law in order to safeguard the rights of the Jewish people in the United States and Israel.

Staff and Board

Susan B. Tuchman, Esq.

Director since 2003. Ms. Tuchman graduated magna cum laude, with honors, from Brandeis University, and received her law degree from the Boston University School of Law, where she was accorded the academic distinction of Paul J. Liacos Scholar.

Following a clerkship with the Superior Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, Ms. Tuchman was a litigator at the Boston law firm of Fine & Ambrogne until the firm’s dissolution, and then practiced in the Boston office of the law firm of Hinckley, Allen & Snyder, where she was the first woman partner in the firm’s litigation department. Ms. Tuchman had a general and varied commercial litigation practice at both firms, and also handled several civil rights and constitutional cases.

In addition to a Director managing its day-to-day affairs, the ZOA-CLJ has a distinguished Board of Advisors:

• Morris J. Amitay, Esq., a prominent Washington lobbyist and head of a major pro-Israel PAC who was formerly national executive director of AIPAC.  
• Louis Rene Beres, a professor of international law at Purdue University who has lectured and published widely on international relations and international law.   
• Stephen M. Flatow, Esq., a leader of legal and educational efforts to hold terrorists and their sponsors accountable for their actions.  
• Malvina Halberstam, a professor of international law at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and former counselor on international law for the U.S. Department of State, Office of the Legal Advisor.  
• Nathan Lewin, Esq., a renowned expert in criminal and constitutional law who has taught at Columbia Law School, Harvard Law School, and the University of Chicago Law School, and is at the vanguard of litigation against terrorists and their supporters.  
• Steven R. Perles, Esq., founder of his own firm and one of the country’s leading lawyers representing victims of terrorism.  
• Clifford A. Rieders, Esq., who heads his own law firm in Pennsylvania and is a past president of the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association.

How Can We Help You?

If you need legal assistance on a matter that you believe supports our mission, please contact us. We will try to help you or find someone who can.

How Can You Help Us?

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