Liberty Counsel filed a motion in the Superior Court of California on behalf of the nonprofit outreach ministry Jews for Jesus to strike a claim for punitive damages from a plaintiff claiming the ministry defamed him. Ariel Amitay, an alleged orthodox Jewish teacher, is seeking $5 million in punitive damages from Jews for Jesus for its anonymized social media posts that he alleges resulted in the loss of his job and damaged his reputation for falsely suggesting he supported the Christian ministry. Liberty Counsel argues the request for punitive damages should be stricken for a lack of facts and procedural deficiencies that do not justify such an extraordinary claim.

In Amitay v. Jews for Jesus, there will be a hearing on the motion in the Superior Court of California in San Francisco County on December 4, 2026, at 9:00 a.m. PDT.

Following the attacks on October 7, 2023, Jews for Jesus distributed Bibles to Israeli soldiers to provide comfort and support. On its Facebook page, Jews for Jesus used a stock photo of an Israeli soldier from a popular website that provides millions of stock photographs under a worldwide copyright license to download, modify, and use for free. Jews for Jesus blurred the face, never used Amitay’s name, and even used the pseudonymous name “Nachman” in the photo’s caption. Jews for Jesus had no prior knowledge of Amitay.

Amitay now says that he is the person in the blurred photo, which associated him with their Christian outreach ministry despite the blurred photo and caption making no such association. As a result, Amitay claims that the photo created such a false impression of him that it caused his employer to terminate him from his “dream” teaching job. Amitay filed the lawsuit on Christmas Eve 2024 seeking no less than $5 million in punitive damages. 

In the motion to strike, Liberty Counsel argues that Jews for Jesus took deliberate steps to anonymize the photo with the blur and pseudonym. Therefore, the lawsuit fails to provide concrete facts showing “actual malice” that Jews for Jesus intentionally tried to harm Amitay’s reputation, which is legally required for punitive damages. Additionally, the punitive claim also independently fails on procedural grounds because California law prohibits a complaint from specifying a dollar amount at the pleading stage and requires courts to grant permission before seeking punitive damages, which Amitay has not yet obtained. 

The claim fails on each of these independent grounds and must be stricken, states the motion. 

Liberty Counsel has argued that California’s anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuit against public participation) statute prohibits these types of lawsuits attempting to hold organizations liable for their First Amendment expression. Under a proper anti-SLAPP analysis, Amitay’s claims should have been dismissed as a matter of law since the social media posts lacked any reasonable false or defamatory intent or inference. However, both the California Supreme Court and a U.S. federal court have allowed the case to proceed in the lower state court.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “There is no reasonable interpretation that Jews for Jesus, who had no knowledge of Ariel Amitay, intended to defame him personally with their social media posts. The posts were a part of a larger religious expression about giving Bibles to Israeli soldiers and did not in any way portray or identify anyone in support of its religious views. Amitay needs to be held responsible for bringing this frivolous lawsuit.”