22-05-2025
- Politics
- San Francisco Chronicle
California anti-discrimination bill faces blowback
It would seem hard to find any controversial issues in legislation now moving through the state Assembly that would prohibit California public schools from allowing the use of any textbooks, other writings or classroom instruction that promote discrimination based on race, gender, religion, nationality or any other category protected by law.
Sponsored by the Legislature's Jewish Caucus, with support from caucuses of racial and ethnic minorities, the bill, AB715, won unanimous approval from the Assembly Education Committee last week, and received only favorable testimony at Wednesday's hearing of the Assembly Appropriations Committee.
But one provision of the measure has alarmed pro-Palestinian groups, other critics of Israel's government such as Jewish Voice for Peace, and free-speech advocates including the American Civil Liberties Union. It would define a person's 'nationality,' one of the categories protected from discrimination, to include their 'residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity.'
That appears to mean, according to the bill's opponents, that a teacher or course material that criticized Israel's government, or questioned its ongoing attack on Gaza, would be prohibited because it could be considered an attack on Israel's primary religious group. And AB715 would also establish a state Antisemitism Coordinator's office to oversee compliance with the law.
This is 'a thinly veiled attempt to expand the definition of antisemitism to include any discussion that is critical of the state of Israel,' Mohamed Shekh of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center told the Chronicle.
'If we are not allowed to talk about the conflict … we will be failing our students and actually increasing antisemitism,' Gabriel Kahn, an eighth-grade teacher in Oakland, said in an interview after testifying against the bill on behalf of opposing groups.
But that interpretation of the bill's language is incorrect, according to its lead author, Assembly Member Rick Chavez Zbur, D-Los Angeles. Coauthors include Assembly Member Dawn Addis, D-Monterey, and state Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco.
Criticizing Israel's government or its policies 'does not constitute antisemitism,' Zbur told the Chronicle, 'as long as that criticism is consistent with how you would criticize any other government that's doing the same thing.'
Or as Wiener put it, 'I have no issue with criticism of Israel or any other country. I – and many others – have a big issue when that criticism crosses the line into demonizing Israel, which sadly has happened all too often in recent years in California classrooms.'
Which raises the question of whether the bill is needed, as its supporters contend, to combat a rise in antisemitism in California schools.
Jewish students 'are getting bullied and harassed in schools,' said David Bocarsley, executive director of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, which represents 39 organizations. The Anti-Defamation League, which combats antisemitism and supports Israel, reported that antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault in California, on school grounds and elsewhere, increased nearly 40% between 2021 and 2022.
In one incident documented by state education officials, last October a teacher at the Tamalpais Union High School District in Marin County told students the schools had a day off for Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, but not for Indigenous People's Day, 'because we have too many Jews in the district.'
The state Department of Education also found bias in two 12th-grade ethnic studies classes at San Jose's Branham High School in 2023: One teacher told the class that Israel was a settler-colonial state, and another did not comment on or dispute a student's reference to 'the genocide of Palestinians.'
And this February, the Santa Ana Unified School District, in a settlement with the Anti-Defamation League and other Jewish groups, canceled ethnic studies classes that the groups said were biased and agreed that the content of future courses would be discussed in advance at public meetings.
But state education officials have not reported on whether there has been an overall increase in antisemitic incidents. Shekh, of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center, said the Anti-Defamation League's assertions of huge increases were based mostly on 'instances where criticism of Israel or anti-Zionist speech was classified as antisemitism.'
And last November a federal judge dismissed a lawsuit by Concerned Jewish Parents and Teachers of Los Angeles that contended the ethnic studies curriculum in some Los Angeles schools, and about two dozen school districts in California, promoted antisemitism.
Ethnic studies, which focuses on the history and experiences of racial and ethnic minorities, is already taught in many California schools and will be a required course in high schools this fall under a first-in-the-nation state law. The state's model curriculum for the program does not refer to Israel and Palestine, but the course challenged in the lawsuit, labeled the 'Liberated Ethnic Studies Curriculum,' includes discussions of Palestinians and the lands they held before Israel's establishment in 1948.
The lawsuit contended the classes were intended to erase 'the idea of Zionism, and the legitimacy of the existence of the State of Israel, from the public square.' But U.S. District Judge Fernando Olguin said the apparent goal of the suit was to classify as antisemitic 'instruction that may be critical of Zionism or Israel,' and that the parents and teachers had not shown that they or the students would be harmed by 'learning about Israel and Palestine.'
He also said a ban on the curriculum would violate freedom of speech. The plaintiffs have appealed his ruling.
Earlier legislation, which failed to advance, was aimed at tightening rules against discrimination in ethnic studies classes. AB715 is broader and would apply to courses in all subjects. The next committee vote is scheduled Friday.
