Judge lets California antisemitism law take effect, rejecting teachers’ censorship claims
A group of teachers argued the law would chill classroom speech about Israel
Jewish students at El Camino Real Charter High School walk out to protest antisemitic incidents at the Los Angeles school on Feb. 27, 2024. Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images
By Hannah Feuer January 2, 2026
A federal judge on Wednesday allowed a California law aimed at combatting antisemitism to go into effect, rejecting a legal challenge that argued the measure should be blocked because of its potential to chill classroom speech about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The California law, AB 715, establishes a state Office of Civil Rights and an antisemitism prevention coordinator, who will be appointed by the governor and confirmed by the state senate. It also requires school curricula to be “factually accurate” and free of “advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship.”
The bill drew opposition from the California Teachers Association and a legal challenge from the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, whose national legal director, Jenin Younes, argued the law’s “entire point is to conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism into discrimination law, then deploy a new bureaucracy to punish that speech.”
But Judge Noël Wise wrote in her decision that the teachers challenging the law were unlikely to succeed on the merits, partly because teachers do not have the same First Amendment rights as private citizens while teaching.
Wise also rejected the argument that the law was so vague, teachers couldn’t know what would and wouldn’t count as antisemitic.
“A reasonable person reading AB 715 would sufficiently understand what the legislature meant by the word ‘antisemitism,’” Wise wrote in her decision. “That is enough.”
The California law does not define antisemitism, but cites the Biden administration’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. Biden’s strategy references several antisemitism definitions, while calling the International Holocaust Remembrance Association (IHRA) definition — which classifies most expressions of anti-Zionism as antisemitism — the “most prominent.”
Younes told the Forward that that the law is confusing for teachers, because it suggests they could be punished for anti-Zionist speech but doesn’t specify when criticism of Israel crosses the line into antisemitism.
Meanwhile, supporters of the law say it is crucial for combatting rising antisemitism in California schools.
“Today’s ruling is a powerful and clear affirmation that protecting students from harassment is not only lawful, it is essential,” David Bocarsly, executive director of the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, wrote in a statement. He added that the ruling made clear the law “respects free speech while ensuring schools meet their responsibility to keep students safe.”
The law went into effect Jan. 1 but is still subject to further challenges in court. Younes said the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee will appeal the decision.
