The Not on Our Dime divestment campaign is responding to a new legal filing by the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh and raising concerns about its implications for direct democracy.
On April 30, the Jewish Federation filed a court motion seeking $85,783 for costs and attorneys’ fees from Not On Our Dime’s fiscal sponsor, Project for Responsive Democracy (PRD). A brief filed by former Donald Trump lawyer Ronald Hicks on behalf of the Federation alleges that Not on Our Dime and PRD undertook petition drives in bad faith, made false statements to voters, advanced their efforts knowing they lacked the requisite number of valid signatures, and “wasted the time of Petitioners and the Court not once, but twice.” The filing also asked the court to consider the campaign’s “effect” on Pittsburgh’s Jewish community.
In a May 30 press release, Not on Our Dime called the Federation’s motion for legal fees an effort to “stifle democracy” and a “punitive attempt to extract tens of thousands of dollars.”
“The Jewish Federation has stepped far beyond its mandate as a community organization and is acting as a local arm of the Israel lobby,” Not on Our Dime organizer Ben Case said. “It wasn’t enough to challenge the petition, now they’re pursuing the group that fiscally sponsored it in an attempt to punish even trying to give people a democratic say over the billions of taxpayer dollars our government sends to the Israeli war machine.”
The Pittsburgh-based Not on Our Dime campaign tried twice to introduce a ballot referendum that would’ve diverted city taxpayer money away from countries engaged in genocide, specifying Israel, through an amendment to the city’s Home Rule Charter. Not on Our Dime withdrew its most recent petition amidst legal challenges by the Jewish Federation and City Controller Rachael Heisler, ultimately stipulating to a deficiency in its signatures at a March 7 court hearing.
At the hearing before Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge John T. McVay Jr., lawyers representing the Jewish Federation had previously accused Not on Our Dime of bad-faith efforts.
“This is the second time this group has done this,” attorney Ronald Hicks said. “This is the second time my client has had to spend a lot of time and resources.”
Though Judge McVay found the campaign’s petition had a signature deficiency, he stated Not on Our Dime had acted “in good faith.”
Chuck Pascal, the attorney defending Not on Our Dime and PRD, previously called the hearing a “show trial” and told Pittsburgh City Paper that Pennsylvania courts rarely award legal fees in election cases, “unless one side has been, for lack of a better term, unreasonable.”
“Unfortunately, we seem to be in a time in this country when money is increasingly being used as a cudgel to suppress speech and enforce conformity of speech,” Pascal said in Not on Our Dime’s May 30 release.
Not on Our Dime asserts that, beyond the ongoing legal battle, the Federation’s court filing raises alarms about broader suppression, particularly in a chilling environment under the second Trump administration. From its inception last August, the campaign has maintained that a majority of Americans support an arms embargo against Israel, also citing a November 2024 poll in which a majority of American Jews supported withholding arms shipments to contend that popular will is not being expressed.
Not on Our Dime organizer Ben Case previously raised concerns to City Paper that both the legal challenges the campaign faces and the “high bar” for ballot initiatives imposed by Pennsylvania’s Act 77 election law augur poorly for direct democracy.
“Voters are deeply frustrated,” said Aparna Nigam, a Not on Our Dime organizer, in the group’s release, noting that Pittsburgh voters have no option to put forth ballot initiatives statewide.
In its court filing, the Jewish Federation also accused Case, who is Jewish, of antisemitic speech for commenting to CP that the Federation was using its resources to stifle the referendum process. (The Federation previously told CP regarding the legal fee motion that the organization is pursuing all available legal avenues. Its April 30 court filing also repeatedly states that labeling its legal challenges as a voter suppression attempt is “false.”)
Additionally, in the May 20 primary election, two Pittsburgh ballot measures passed that raise the bar to introduce future ballot future referenda — both were proposed by Pittsburgh City Council in direct response to Not on Our Dime’s divestment efforts.
In its release, Not on Our Dime drew comparisons to Project Esther, an initiative from the Heritage Foundation (a conservative think tank that also authored Project 2025) that seeks to use financial and institutional leverage to “crush” pro-Palestinian activism, according to a recent investigative report by the New York Times.
Since Not on Our Dime withdrew its petition in March, the Israeli military has imposed a total blockade of the Gaza Strip and cut off food and supply distribution, while continuing deadly airstrikes. A United Nations humanitarian chief warned that 14,000 babies in Gaza could die without aid.
A hearing date for the pending case has yet to be determined.
This article appears in May 28 – Jun 3, 2025.
