Arab-American Group Challenges Law Fighting Antisemitism In Public Schools. Judge Says No.

A federal judge has slammed the door for good on a legal challenge to California’s landmark law targeting antisemitism in public schools, tossing the case with prejudice and blocking a repeat lawsuit.

The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee had sued on behalf of parents, teachers, students and the group Los Angeles Educators for Palestine. U.S. District Judge Noël Wise in the Northern District of California dismissed the case on Tuesday, delivering a decisive win for backers of AB 715, the law that created a state antisemitism prevention coordinator inside California’s Office of Civil Rights and set new rules for how discrimination is handled in K-12 classrooms.

The law took effect January 1. The plaintiffs claimed the statute trampled their First Amendment rights.

For the second time, Judge Wise made it clear that she wasn’t buying it. In December, she had already refused to freeze the law while the case played out, ruling that the educators challenging it couldn’t show their classroom speech was constitutionally protected in the first place. She also called out what she saw as a contradiction: the plaintiffs claimed the law’s definition of antisemitism was too vague but simultaneously objected to it referencing the widely used International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition.

When the plaintiffs came back this time, Wise found they were mostly recycling arguments she’d already shot down. When they made the new claim that the law violated equal protection by singling out antisemitism for its own coordinator while other forms of bias wait on future legislation, Wise pointed to a companion law, SB 48, which sets up coordinators for other types of discrimination and undercuts the plaintiffs’ argument that Jewish students were getting special treatment.

StandWithUs legal policy director Carly Gammill said the ruling reaffirms that teachers and students don’t get to override state curriculum decisions in the name of free speech, and argued it clears California to focus on protecting Jewish students without fear of legal challenges claiming discrimination against others.

Jewish California CEO David Bocarsly called the decision proof that the law is both constitutionally solid and fair, working alongside protections lawmakers have extended to other groups. The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area praised Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office for defending the law and said the ruling paves the way for full implementation.

American Jewish Committee regional director Teresa Drenick noted that Wise has now rejected the legal challenge twice, with detailed reasoning both times, and said it’s time for Governor Newsom’s office to staff up the new civil rights office and appoint the antisemitism coordinator the law requires.

Because Wise dismissed the case “with prejudice,” the plaintiffs are now barred from refiling the same claims. It remains to be seen whether they’ll pursue further appeals.