On February 24, 2025, a U.S.-Israeli citizen filed suit against Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), the U.S. human rights organization founded by journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and Sarah Leah Whitson, DAWN’s executive director, asking a court to force them to turn over a sweeping range of materials related to their advocacy on behalf of Palestinian victims of human rights abuses in the West Bank.

NYU’s Technology Law & Policy Clinic, and later the Knight Institute, defended DAWN and Ms. Whitson from these intrusive discovery demands, which were brought under 28 U.S.C. § 1782, a federal statute that allows foreign litigants to obtain evidence from people and entities in the United States. DAWN and Ms. Whitson argued that the First Amendment should protect them from revealing confidential and sensitive information relating to their human rights investigations because disclosure would chill DAWN’s constitutionally protected human rights advocacy.

Status: On September 18, 2025, a federal judge denied discovery after finding that the requested information was not even minimally relevant to the petitioner’s anticipated foreign litigation and that DAWN and Ms. Whitson qualified for protection under the First Amendment reporters’ privilege. 

Case Information: In re Application of Issac Levi Pilant v. Democracy for the Arab World Now, Inc., No. 1:25-mc-00760-JMA-LKE (E.D.N.Y.)