{"version":"1.9","identifier":"30eb6dbd-cf5d-4b4f-9b27-b6d8c3e4f87e","language":"en-US","title":"Knesset asks High Court to shelve petitions against law on gender-segregated graduate study","layout":{"columns":7,"width":1024,"margin":32,"gutter":20},"componentLayouts":{"text":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"maximumContentWidth":720,"margin":{"top":12,"bottom":12}},"photo":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"margin":{"top":20,"bottom":20}}},"componentTextStyles":{"default":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"textColor":"#171717"},"headline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue-Bold","fontSize":36,"lineHeight":42,"conditional":[{"conditions":{"maxViewportWidth":480},"fontSize":28,"lineHeight":34}]},"intro":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":20,"lineHeight":28,"textColor":"#555555"},"caption":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":19,"textColor":"#666666"},"byline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":20,"textColor":"#666666"},"body":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"paragraphSpacingAfter":14,"linkStyle":{"textColor":"#00704a"}}},"metadata":{"canonicalURL":"https://567politics.com/news/israel-knesset-high-court-gender-segregated-graduate-study-law-petitions-november-2026","datePublished":"2026-11-03T20:19:23.427511Z","dateModified":"2026-11-03T20:20:06.769763Z","authors":["Patrick Karsh"],"excerpt":"The Knesset and the Council for Higher Education say challenges to a July law extending separate study to master's and doctoral degrees are premature. The attorney-general and petitioners want a hearing set.","thumbnailURL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/30eb6dbd-cf5d-4b4f-9b27-b6d8c3e4f87e/7aab1c94b9e409f1062835d75eecfd60.jpg","keywords":["il"],"generatorName":"Frog News","generatorVersion":"1.0"},"components":[{"role":"title","text":"Knesset asks High Court to shelve petitions against law on gender-segregated graduate study","textStyle":"headline","layout":"text"},{"role":"intro","text":"The Knesset and the Council for Higher Education say challenges to a July law extending separate study to master's and doctoral degrees are premature. The attorney-general and petitioners want a hearing set.","textStyle":"intro","layout":"text"},{"role":"byline","text":"By Patrick Karsh · Published November 3, 2026","textStyle":"byline","layout":"text"},{"role":"photo","URL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/30eb6dbd-cf5d-4b4f-9b27-b6d8c3e4f87e/7aab1c94b9e409f1062835d75eecfd60.jpg","caption":"The Supreme Court building in Jerusalem, where the High Court of Justice sits. · Shifra Levyathan / PikiWiki Israel, CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/)","accessibilityCaption":"The Supreme Court building in Jerusalem, where the High Court of Justice sits.","layout":"photo"},{"role":"caption","text":"The Supreme Court building in Jerusalem, where the High Court of Justice sits. · Shifra Levyathan / PikiWiki Israel, CC BY 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/)","textStyle":"caption","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Israel's Knesset asked the High Court of Justice on Tuesday to take two petitions off its docket. The petitions challenge a July law that extends gender-segregated study at Israeli colleges and universities to master's and doctoral degrees. The Knesset argued the cases are premature because the Council for Higher Education (CHE) has not yet decided how to carry out the law. The attorney-general took a different route and asked the court to schedule a hearing.\n\nThe filing came a week after the [October 27 election](https://567politics.com/news/israel-final-count-53-48-19-allegations-october-2026) and as President Isaac Herzog prepares [coalition consultations](https://567politics.com/news/israel-coalition-talks-herzog-timetable-october-2026). The law was passed by the outgoing Knesset. It is one of several measures on religion and public life that the next government may have to address, along with the haredi draft dispute covered in our report on [United Torah Judaism's coalition demands](https://567politics.com/news/israel-utj-holds-out-shas-religious-zionism-otzma-recommend-netanyahu-november-2026).\n\nThis report sets out what the law says, what each side told the court, what the CHE's own figures show, and the next steps.\n\n## What the Knesset and the council asked for\n\n[The Jerusalem Post reported](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-913723) that the Knesset's request followed a preliminary response from the CHE and its Planning and Budgeting Committee. Both bodies asked the court to dismiss the petitions as premature.\n\nThe council said the law had not changed its existing policy. It said it had not authorized any new segregated programs for graduate students, and that institutions must keep operating under the approvals they already hold.\n\nThe council drew a line between a law that permits segregated graduate programs and a decision that actually approves one. The amendment does not require the council to approve any particular program, it said. It leaves the council in charge of setting conditions and protecting equality. Without knowing those conditions, the council argued, the court cannot judge the alleged harm or whether that harm could be justified. It also said the petitioners had not approached the council before going to court.\n\nIn its own Tuesday filing, the Knesset said the petitioners would have to amend their cases once the council adopts a policy. Setting a hearing now, without knowing when that work will end, could force all sides to argue over a changed set of facts at short notice, it said. The Knesset argued that removing the petitions, while keeping the right to challenge later arrangements, would not harm the petitioners or the public interest, since the council was not approving programs under the new framework anyway.\n\n## The attorney-general's request\n\nThe attorney-general asked the court to keep the petitions moving toward a hearing. She asked to file her own preliminary response 21 days before that hearing, once the council's position can be taken into account, according to the Post.\n\nBoth groups of petitioners agreed to that request, on the condition that the court schedule the hearing as soon as possible.\n\nThe council said its steering committee first discussed the amendment on October 6 and scheduled another discussion for Tuesday. Its recommendations must then pass through the Planning and Budgeting Committee and the full council. Even a change in policy would not automatically approve new programs, the council said. Each would still need its own approval.\n\n## What the July law says\n\nThe Knesset passed the amendment to the Student Rights Law by 52 votes to 43 in July. It was sponsored by Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Limor Son Har-Melech.\n\nAccording to [the Post's report on the first petition](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-902703), the amendment expressly allows the CHE to approve separate programs for men and women in bachelor's, master's and doctoral studies. At institutions that otherwise teach men and women together, separation is limited to classrooms. That limit does not apply to institutions designated for only men or only women. The amendment also states that running separate institutions or programs for men and women for religious reasons will not, in itself, count as discrimination.\n\n[The Post reported in July](https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-903082) that, at mixed institutions, enrollment in a separate track must be voluntary.\n\n## The 2021 ruling the law builds on\n\nThe dispute goes back to a 2021 High Court ruling. All five justices on an expanded panel agreed that gender segregation in higher education infringed the constitutional right to equality. A 3-2 majority still upheld the CHE's framework at the time.\n\nThe majority found the framework proportionate only because it was limited in three ways, according to the Post. It applied only to haredi (ultra-Orthodox) students. It applied only to bachelor's degrees, which the court described as an \"entry gate\" to higher education. And it applied only inside classrooms, not in shared campus spaces. The ruling also barred the exclusion of women lecturers. The court warned that departing from the arrangement's \"delicate balances\" could make segregated programs unlawful.\n\nThe existing policy generally limits segregation to undergraduate programs for graduates of haredi schools, and to classrooms, though some older segregated master's programs were allowed to continue.\n\n## Who is challenging the law\n\nTwo petitions are before the court.\n\nThe first was filed hours after the law passed in July. It was brought by six haredi women and 10 academics and is led by Tel Aviv University law professor Yofi Tirosh. The second was filed by the Israel Women's Network, the Israel Religious Action Center and Na'amat. Both ask the court to strike down the law or to read it narrowly, so that the limits set in 2021 still apply.\n\nThe Tirosh petition argues that the Knesset widened the model without fixing what it describes as long-standing breaches of the limits that made it lawful. It accuses the CHE of failing to stop segregation from spreading into libraries, corridors and administrative offices, and of failing to enforce the ban on excluding women lecturers from men's programs.\n\nThe petition quotes a 2024 CHE meeting in which officials said: \"We did not find at any institution a woman lecturer teaching haredi men in a mandatory frontal course.\" The council told the Post the quote came from an internal discussion held before its current policy was written.\n\nThe petitioners also argue that an equality clause in an earlier draft of the bill was removed in committee. In their view, the result is a law meant to enable \"separate but equal\" programs that could instead lead to \"separate and unequal\" education. They warn that women could be steered toward lower-paid fields, and that graduate study depends on close work with senior researchers, not only on classroom teaching.\n\nSeveral haredi petitioners spoke in their own words. \"A partition never remains merely an option,\" said Dr. Estee Rieder, a researcher of haredi society. \"Once established, it becomes a norm behind which women are expected to stand.\" Feini Suknik, a haredi educator, said: \"The haredi public does not need a parallel and inferior academy. It needs real entry into academia itself.\"\n\nThe [Israel Women's Network says on its petition page](https://iwn.org.il/atrnulebagatshafrada/) that the law seeks to stretch segregation to advanced degrees and across campus, not only classrooms. \"From the experience of recent years we already know: gender segregation does not stop,\" the group wrote. \"It only spreads and widens all the time.\" It said the case \"is not a struggle against one population or another.\"\n\n## What the law's sponsor says\n\nSon Har-Melech has said the law widens access for religious students. After the court declined in July to freeze the law, she said, according to [Israel National News](https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/430814), that the law \"is intended to expand freedom of choice and access to higher education for communities that have until now been excluded from it.\"\n\nShe added that \"that concern cannot justify denying thousands of Israelis the opportunity to pursue higher education.\" She called on academic institutions \"not to wait\" and to begin applying to the CHE to open separate programs under the law. \"Thousands of women and men are waiting for this opportunity,\" she said.\n\nWhen the law passed, she said it \"does not impose anything on anyone\" and instead \"expands freedom, enables diversity and respects the human mosaic of Israeli society,\" according to the Post.\n\n## The council's figures on lecturers\n\nThe CHE disputed the petitioners' account of how its current rules work. It gave the court new figures on teaching staff in existing separate programs, according to Tuesday's Post report.\n\nOf 93 programs operating in the 2025-26 academic year, 78 reported having both men and women among their lecturers. The other 15 were required to show such a mix before opening for 2026-27, and later updated their teaching teams. Based on reports from the institutions, the council said, all of the separate programs running this year now have both male and female lecturers. It said women teach in men's tracks in various formats at most institutions, some in person.\n\nEarlier, the council told the Post that no complaints had been filed through its channel for reporting discrimination against lecturers in recent years.\n\n## How many haredi students are in higher education\n\nThe number of students who came from the haredi school system has been rising, and the fastest growth has been in graduate study. These are the CHE's figures for the 2025-26 academic year, as [reported by Makor Rishon](https://www.makorrishon.co.il/news/education/article/379414).\n\n**Students who attended haredi schools, by degree, 2025-26**\n\nNumber of students in Israeli higher education who studied in the haredi school system. Total 20,006, up from 18,759 a year earlier.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"},{"role":"htmltable","html":"<table><tr><th>Degree</th><th>Students</th></tr><tr><td>Bachelor's</td><td>16,409</td></tr><tr><td>Master's</td><td>3,373</td></tr><tr><td>Doctorate</td><td>224</td></tr></table>","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Source: [Council for Higher Education data via Makor Rishon](https://www.makorrishon.co.il/news/education/article/379414)\n\nAccording to the same figures, the number at the bachelor's level rose 4.9% from the year before. The number in master's programs rose 15%, and the number of doctoral students rose 18.5%. The CHE sees the rise in advanced degrees as a sign that haredi graduates want to go beyond a first degree, Makor Rishon reported. Women made up 58.6% of all students in Israel this year, and 63.2% of master's students.\n\nThese figures do not show how many of these students are in separate programs. The council has not published that breakdown in the sources reviewed for this report.\n\n## Academics and resignations\n\nA forum of women professors, Afik in Academia, filed a friend-of-the-court paper. It warned that extending segregation to advanced degrees would hurt women's job prospects, research and academic standards. The forum said it supports more haredi participation in higher education. It proposed scholarships, preparatory courses and mentoring within existing programs instead of more separation.\n\nFive CHE members resigned in July in protest at the law. Four of them, Edit Tshuva, Marcelle Machluf, Jihad El-Sana and Lia Laor, wrote that the law \"constitutes unprecedented interference in the independence of the Council for Higher Education.\" A fifth, Moshe Vigdor, resigned separately. He wrote that \"the law will grant state legitimacy to the exclusion of women in academia,\" according to the Post.\n\n## Next steps at the court and the council\n\nThe court has not yet ruled on the Knesset's request or set a hearing date. In July it declined to issue a conditional order or to freeze the law while the case proceeds.\n\nThe council's committees must still finish their review. Any new graduate program would need separate approval after that. The next Knesset and government will also shape the issue. Parties that backed the law, including Otzma Yehudit, are part of the bloc that [recommended Benjamin Netanyahu](https://567politics.com/news/israel-utj-holds-out-shas-religious-zionism-otzma-recommend-netanyahu-november-2026) to the president. Opposition leaders [recommended Gadi Eisenkot](https://567politics.com/news/israel-opposition-leaders-recommend-eisenkot-herzog-consultations-arab-parties-november-2026) instead. Eisenkot has said an opposition-led Knesset would repeal laws that he says \"threaten democracy,\" [according to the Post](https://www.jpost.com/israel-election-2026/article-913738). He has not said in the sources reviewed here whether this law is among them.\n\nFor how 567politics handles sources and disputed claims, see our [methodology](https://567politics.com/methodology).\n\n## About this report\n\nThis report draws on The Jerusalem Post's coverage of the Knesset's and the council's filings and of the July petitions and resignations; Israel National News; the Israel Women's Network; and Council for Higher Education data reported by Makor Rishon. Quotes from Hebrew-language sources are 567politics translations. Times are Eastern.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"}]}