The Jewish support groups the Louis D. Brandeis Center For Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs are suing the state of California on behalf of Jewish parents whose children allegedly have been subjected to “cruel, persistent and pervasive antisemitism” in public schools.
The Los Angeles Superior Court lawsuit also names as defendants the state Board of Education, Dept. of Education and Supt. Tony Thurmond. The complaint highlights what it calls “unchecked antisemitism festering in school districts across the state,” including Los Angeles, Santa Clara, San Francisco, Campbell Union, Berkeley, Fremont, Etiwanda and Oakland.
“The California education system is teaching the state’s children that Jewish Americans and Israelis are racists, white supremacists, oppressors and baby-killers who should be shunned,” said Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education during two administrations. “School officials have done little or nothing at all to help these children. It is the state’s legal responsibility to defend and protect innocent children from discrimination and bigotry, not foster hate as California has been doing.”
According to the complaint, the state agencies are violating the California constitution, including its equal protection and free exercise clauses, by allegedly failing to take action against antisemitic discrimination in the state’s public schools. The agencies have primarily ignored matters when California public schools permit, and at times encourage, an ongoing hostile environment for Jewish students, the suit further alleges.
The agencies also know that many California teachers use class time to teach antisemitic and biased anti-Israel propaganda and to lead students in off-campus walkouts that support Hamas and demonize Israel, the suit alleges.
A Dept. of Education representative did not immediately reply to a request for comment on the suit brought Thursday.
In the Los Angeles Unified School District, at Kester Elementary School, a third-grade Jewish student was called a racist by her teacher and barred from performing in the talent show unless she agreed not to use her poster which included a picture of the Israeli flag, the suit states.
Meanwhile, at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School, a Jewish honors student was forced to sit through his teacher’s antisemitic celebration of the October 7, 2023 massacre of Israelis, while at Louis Armstrong Middle School, a teacher repeatedly meted out unfounded discipline to a seventh-grade Jewish student who wore a Star of David necklace and Israel-related shirts to school, the suit states.
Jewish students are the victims of “cruel, persistent and pervasive antisemitism” in public schools, according to the suit, which further states that non-Jewish pupils have called their Jewish peers antisemitic names and also assaulted them. In each case, school administrators failed to take meaningful action to address the problem, the suit also alleges.
At Etiwanda Unified School District in San Bernardino County, a middle school youth choked a Jewish student while shouting, “Shut your stupid Jew ass up,” yet the staff blamed the victim, the suit states.
In Watsonville, a Pajaro Valley school board member publicly ranted against the Jewish community and at a Berkeley Unified school board meeting, a mother reporting Jewish slurs was mocked and subsequently her job information was posted online, the suit states.
The lawsuit also documents what it says are multiple instances in which teachers or unions have facilitated the spread of antisemitism into California classrooms, including the Oakland Education Association, which allegedly created an unapproved curriculum that recycles antisemitic propaganda and age-old antisemitic tropes. The curriculum featured, among other things, a children’s book for Oakland’s transitional kindergarten through third grade students that proclaims, “I is for Intifada,” the suit states.
“Jews consistently are being targeted with hostility because of who they are, including in California and particularly in K-12 public schools,” said Roz Rothstein, CEO and co-founder of StandWithUs. “It is imperative that California K-12 schools not be co-opted by those seeking to indoctrinate students into antisemitic hate. However, Jewish students and parents indicate that this is precisely what is happening in California.”
The lawsuit was necessitated by the “systemic failure and seeks to ensure, going forward, that California’s Jewish students are protected and have access to an education free from discrimination,” according to Rothstein.
The two groups are seeking statewide injunctive relief, asking the court to order monitoring of schools where antisemitism is a problem, elimination of antisemitic curriculum and instruction, prohibition on segregation of Jewish students, mandatory antisemitism training for teachers and administrators and limits on school funding for schools that allegedly fail to enforce non-discrimination policies.