The state of California, its Department of Education and its officials were sued Thursday by two Jewish organizations that say the state has allowed harassment of Jewish and Israeli students to continue unchecked on campuses.
The lawsuit by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights and StandWithUs — a nonprofit organization focused on Jewish community rights — was filed on behalf of 12 Jewish parents and students who say they experienced “pervasive anti-Semitism in their California public schools,” court documents said.
The lawsuit also calls the California State Board of Education and State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
The lawsuit alleges that the state violated the California Constitution’s equal protection clauses and free exercise clauses, which prohibit state-run discrimination against certain religious organizations. The lawsuit seeks a court order that would require California to monitor anti-Semitism on campus, end anti-Semitic courses and limit funding for schools that fail to enforce non-discrimination policies.
The California Department of Education and several school districts named in the lawsuit did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.
The lawsuit alleges eight K-12 school districts — including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, Berkeley Unified, Fremont Unified and Oakland Unified — allowed hate to “run rampant” on their campuses, an action the state did not intervene.
The allegations include a Jewish student who was allegedly forced to sit through a “celebration” of a 2023 Hamas attack against Israel at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Los Angeles and a Berkeley Unified teacher who allegedly displayed a fist bump on the Star of David – a religious symbol on Israel’s national flag, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said some states allow “unsanctioned education” containing antisemitic tropes, including in Oakland, where an unsanctioned “teaching” protest included a children’s book that allegedly read “I belong to the Intifada,” according to reports in the New York Times. The word “Intifada” means “rebellion” in Arabic.
“Jewish children and children who identify as Jewish are bullied and ostracized by their peers and abused by their teachers, who silence them, mock them, and even isolate them when they speak up,” said Kenneth L. Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center and US assistant secretary of education during the Bush and first Trump administrations.
Los Angeles high school parent Mike Rosenthal said in testimony published by the Brandeis Center that “we are joining this lawsuit because our child does not feel safe expressing Judaism in a public school after an old teacher was allowed to express anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American material in the classroom.”
Catherine Lhamon, executive director of the UC Berkeley Edley Center on Law and Democracy, said the lawsuit by the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs appears to cast a vote of “no confidence” in California’s recent legislative efforts to address discrimination in schools.
Assembly Bill 715 and Senate Bill 48 were signed into law last year, creating a coordinator for the prevention of antisemitism and the federal Office of Civil Rights to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination in K-12 schools.
“It’s more unusual to go to court than to go to the Legislature or the governor’s office for that, but it will be an uphill battle for the accusers to quickly get through this case,” said Lhamon. “I think the state’s view, as it has recently developed this program, is that it has a new process that should work.”
The state constitution’s strong equal protection clause has saved many states for years, Lhamon said.
