By Kanishka Singh<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) – The Justice Department said on Monday it opened a probe into a small coffee shop chain in \u200cNew York City which posted online that it would have turned away \u200cpro-Israel U.S. Representative Dan Goldman had it recognized him during a weekend visit.<\/p>\n
“The Civil Rights Division has \u200bopened an investigation and will bring an enforcement action if warranted,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said on X.<\/p>\n
“Federal law prohibits public accommodations such as coffee shops from discriminating against patrons based on their race, religion, or national origin,” she said.<\/p>\n
Goldman, a \u200cDemocrat, visited Poetica Coffee in \u2060Williamsburg, Brooklyn, outside his district, with his 7-year-old daughter on Sunday, The New York Times reported.<\/p>\n
“We see that you stopped by \u2060our shop today for a coffee,” Poetica Coffee said on Instagram.<\/p>\n
Goldman said he went there so his daughter could use the restroom and that he bought a coffee to \u200bthank staff \u200bfor allowing her to do so.<\/p>\n
“We don’t \u200bserve racists, fascists, homophobes, genocide \u200cenablers or anyone in between,” Poetica Coffee said. “Too bad we didn’t recognize you right away, or we would have turned you away.”<\/p>\n
The coffee shop said it issued a refund. “Don’t ever come to Poetica,” it added.<\/p>\n
Its post was no longer visible on Monday. The Instagram account seems to have been deactivated.<\/p>\n
Goldman is endorsed by New York \u200cGovernor Kathy Hochul and is facing off in \u200ba June 23 primary against Brad Lander, the \u200bformer New York City comptroller \u200bbacked by Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Both Lander and Goldman are Jewish.<\/p>\n
Israel’s \u200cmore than two-year-long assault on Gaza – \u200bwhich has killed tens \u200bof thousands, caused a hunger crisis and internally displaced Gaza’s entire population – has been called a genocide by multiple rights experts, scholars and a \u200bUnited Nations inquiry.<\/p>\n
Israel describes its \u200cactions as self-defense following an October 2023 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 \u200bpeople and in which over 250 were taken hostage.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Kanishka \u200bSingh in Washington; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Kanishka Singh WASHINGTON, June 20 (Reuters) – The Justice Department said on Monday it opened a probe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":274858,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[8069,105738,5353,5320,62957,60,1082,9,24,11,10,105656],"class_list":["post-274857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-brad-lander","tag-civil-rights-division","tag-coffee","tag-dan-goldman","tag-harmeet-dhillon","tag-israel","tag-justice-department","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-poetica-coffee"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=274857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/274857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=274857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=274857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=274857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}