The state of California, its Department of Education and officials were sued Thursday by two Jewish advocacy groups that alleged the state allowed antisemitic harassment of Jewish and Israeli students to go unchecked on campuses.
The suit by Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights and StandWithUs — nonprofits focused on Jewish civil rights — was filed on behalf of at least 12 Jewish parents and students who say they have faced “pervasive anti-Semitism in their California public schools,” court documents said.
The suit also names the California State Board of Education and State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
The lawsuit alleges the state has violated the California Constitution’s equal protection and free exercise clauses, which prohibit discrimination by a state-governed entity against certain religious groups. The suit seeks a court order that would require California to monitor on-campus antisemitism, eliminate antisemitic curricula and impose limits on funding for schools that fail to enforce nondiscrimination policies.
The California Department of Education and several of the school districts cited in the suit did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.
The suit alleges eight K-12 school districts — including Los Angeles Unified, San Francisco Unified, Berkeley Unified, Fremont Unified and Oakland Unified — allowed antisemitism to “fester” on their campuses, actions the state did not intervene to stop.
The accusations include a Jewish student allegedly being forced to sit through a “celebration” of Hamas’ 2023 attack against Israel at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Los Angeles and a Berkeley Unified teacher allegedly displaying imagery of a fist punching through the Star of David — a religious symbol present on Israel’s national flag, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit said some districts allowed “unapproved curriculum” featuring antisemitic tropes, including in Oakland, where an unauthorized “teach-in” protest included a children’s book that allegedly read “I is for Intifada,” according to reports from the New York Times. “Intifada” means “uprising” in Arabic.
“Jewish children and children perceived as Jewish are bullied and excluded by their peers and harassed by their teachers, who silence, mock, and even segregate them if they speak out,” said Kenneth L. Marcus, chair of the Brandeis Center and the former U.S. assistant secretary of Education during the Bush and first Trump administrations.
Los Angeles high school parent Mike Rosenthal said in a testimonial published by the Brandeis Center that “we are joining this suit because our child felt unsafe expressing their Jewish identity in the public school after an adult teacher was permitted to display anti‑Jewish, anti‑Israel, and anti‑American materials in the classroom.”
Catherine Lhamon, the executive director of the UC Berkeley Edley Center on Law and Democracy, said the Brandeis Center and StandWithUs lawsuit appears to express a vote of “no confidence” in California’s recent legislative efforts to address antisemitism at schools.
Assembly Bill 715 and Senate Bill 48 were signed into law last year, establishing an antisemitism prevention coordinator and a state Office for Civil Rights to combat antisemitism and other forms of discrimination in K-12 schools.
“It’s a little unusual to go to the court rather than to the Legislature or the governor’s office on that, but it will be an early hurdle for the litigants to get over in this case,” Lhamon said. “I think the state view, having just upgraded that system, is that it has a new process that should work.”
The state Constitution’s strong equal protection clause has kept most districts in check for years, Lhamon said.
