Clock ticking on California’s K-12 antisemitism bill as legislative session nears end

Jewish students at El Camino Real Charter High School walk out to protesting antisemitic incidents at the Los Angeles school on Feb. 27, 2024. Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images

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(JTA) — Time is nearly running out for California lawmakers to pass a signature bill aimed at curbing antisemitism in K-12 education.

If AB 715 becomes law, it will mark the first time a state creates an antisemitism watchdog for public schools, potentially setting a template for others. The bill is also a major test case for whether states can legislate in this area without inappropriately restricting speech about Israel — a balance at the center of national debates.

With a Sept. 12 end to the legislative session, negotiations on the final language are expected to wrap up by the end of the week, setting up a hearing in the state Senate’s Education Committee early next week and a sprint through the remaining stops. The bill will need to overcome opposition from one of the state’s two major teachers unions as well as several civil liberties groups, both influential forces in Democratic-leaning California.

A coalition representing a wide array of Jewish groups across the state, assembled by the Jewish Public Affairs Committee, has made the bill its main priority this year. It is also at the top of the agenda for the California Legislative Jewish Caucus. Supporters say Jewish students in California public schools face increasing harassment and discrimination, and that districts often fail to respond effectively.

“The rise of antisemitism in our public education system in California was a longstanding problem before Oct. 7, 2023. It has gotten worse since then,” Sen. Scott Wiener, co-chair of the caucus, said at a recent press conference about the bill. “We’ve seen some truly atrocious, hateful behavior exhibited toward Jewish students in California schools, and all too often schools have not responded appropriately in terms of addressing that bigotry.”

Wiener pointed to swastikas carved into school buildings, bullying of Jewish students with antisemitic slurs and classroom discussions that portray Jews as murderers or colonizers.

A narrower bill focused on ethnic studies classes was debated for years, until May, when it was replaced by AB 715, which applies to the entire public school system. After the shift, the new bill gained support from leaders of the Black, Latino and Asian American and Pacific Islander caucuses in Sacramento. The chair of the Latino Caucus is Senate Majority Leader Lena Gonzalez. Later, Senate leader Mike McGuire, one of the state’s most powerful politicians, also endorsed the bill.

In recent weeks, several liberal opponents have attacked the measure by likening it to policies enacted during the Trump administration. They argue that the bill introduces the same kind of language around antisemitism that has enabled federal crackdowns on higher education.

Writing in the New York Times in August, Lily Greenberg Call, who resigned in protest from the Biden administration over U.S. support for the war in Gaza, said the bill cloaks its purpose: the conflation of antisemitism with criticism of Israel.

“In reality, [the bill] imports one of the most troubling censorship tactics from the Trump era into a deep-blue state,” she wrote. “Democrats are the ones leading the charge.”

Mara Harvey, a Jewish schoolteacher and board member of the California Teachers Association, echoed the critique in a recent essay. She warned that the bill would bring “right-wing, Trump-style censorship to California schools.” Harvey said she is deeply concerned about antisemitism in the classroom but argued against the bill’s approach.

In his recent speech, Wiener pushed back. He said his own sharp criticism of the Israeli government’s conduct in Gaza is proof the bill isn’t meant to shield Israel from debate. He also called out what he described as “a false and extremely dangerous narrative being peddled” that confronting antisemitism on the left amounts to siding with Trump.

“Just because Donald Trump is abusing antisemitism doesn’t mean that antisemitism somehow doesn’t exist,” Wiener said.

Jewish groups are mobilizing supporters to travel to Sacramento next week to lobby for the bill in the Senate Education Committee.