Senior Justice Department officials revealed on Wednesday that they have “several open investigations involving Orthodox Jewish communities across the country.”

During a meeting between Trump administration officials and Orthodox Jewish leaders at the Justice Department, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Michael Gates told attendees that the DOJ is looking into several matters impacting the Orthodox community, including how some municipalities’ use of zoning laws had affected individual religious communities’ ability to operate normally.

“We currently have several open investigations involving Orthodox Jewish communities across the country. These investigations include municipalities that have restricted building or operation of houses of worship or other religious land uses, and we are investigating cities that have made changes to zoning laws that negatively impact religious communities. In another matter, we are investigating antisemitic discrimination in public accommodations, including whether a restaurant, believe it or not, has engaged in a pattern practice of religious discrimination for refusing service to Jewish patrons,” Gates said.

Given the ongoing nature of the probes, Gates noted that he couldn’t “get into the specific details” about each. 

Top officials from the department’s Civil Rights Division took part in the meeting, which was organized by the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, including Gates; Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights; and Leo Terrell, senior counsel to Dhillon. The trio assured attendees that the DOJ is working on shared priorities such as combating domestic antisemitism and ensuring religious liberty protections. They outlined legal mechanisms they are utilizing to prosecute antisemitic hate crimes and target state and local governments that may not be in compliance with federal laws protecting religious freedom.

Dhillon told attendees that President Donald Trump’s antisemitism task force “intends to add members from the FBI and State Department in the near future. The FBI will focus on the hate crimes under criminal investigations. The State Department will be able to contribute information about foreign influence, affecting and infecting campus life.”

Gates and Dhillon both detailed how the Civil Rights Division was targeting issues of concern to attendees, such as working with U.S. attorney’s offices nationwide to bring up hate crime charges over antisemitic incidents and ensuring compliance of prior DOJ settlements for Orthodox Jewish plaintiffs. 

“It is this administration’s commitment to use the entire array of tools available to the executive branch to address the scourge of antisemitism experiencing a horrific resurgence in this country. We will conduct investigations directly at jurisdiction, bring litigation as we’ve already done, file amicus briefs to support ongoing litigation where appropriate, withhold federal government funding from institutions and governments that are not consistent with the law and explore other steps aimed at containing this discrimination,” Dhillon said. 

Dhillon began her remarks with a mention of George Washington’s 1790 visit to Touro Synagogue in Newport, Rhode Island, to highlight the longstanding importance of religious liberty in the U.S.. “It is crystal clear that this ideal, this vital human right and natural right to religious liberty was a commitment that President Washington and the other founders shared in developing our country,” Dhillon said of Washington’s historic visit, which took place just shy of a year and a half into his presidency.

Terrell told the crowd that the work their team was doing was intended to last beyond the current administration, criticizing how the Biden administration failed to respond to the surge in antisemitic hate crimes in their final year in office.

“This is a process that is going to require every day commitment, and here’s the plan: we saw what happened prior to this administration in protecting Jewish America — nothing, absolutely nothing. So our goal is to lay the foundation down, now, over the next four years, and make sure, by way of litigation, consent decrees, make it so that it maintains itself after 2028,” Terrell said.