CIVIL RIGHTS, COMMENTARY, GAZA, LEGAL, MIDDLE EAST, PALESTINE, U.S. CONSTITUTION
California Law Illegally Muzzles Students & Teachers
The new law conflates criticism of Zionism with antisemitism and punishes educators for teaching truthful information, reports Marjorie Cohn.
Pro-Palestine demonstration in Oakland, California, August 2014. (Alex Chis, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0 )
Beginning January 1, 2026, teachers in California classrooms will be looking over their shoulders to avoid running afoul of a frightening new “antisemitism” law.
On Oct. 7, despite widespread opposition from civil rights groups, teachers’ unions, and education advocates, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 715, which amends the California Education Code to police what teachers can teach and what students can learn about Israel and Palestine.
“This problematic classroom censorship bill silences Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish, and other marginalized voices in California public schools by shielding a foreign government — Israel — from legitimate criticism and criminalizes honest discussions on Palestine and other global human rights issues,” the Council on American Islamic Relations said in a statement.
Under this law, educators could be charged with unlawful discrimination and disciplined “if they expose their students to ideas, information, and instructional materials that may be considered critical of the State of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism,” according to a lawsuit filed on Nov. 2 by the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC).
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, on behalf of California public school teachers and parents of students who teach and seek to learn about Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East.
“[E]ducators could be charged with unlawful discrimination and disciplined ‘if they expose their students to ideas, information, and instructional materials that may be considered critical of the State of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism…'”
The defendants named in Prichett et al. v. Newsom et al. are Newsom, Attorney General Rob Bonta, and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond.
AB 715 Violates the First Amendment and Due Process
“Since California’s Education Code already prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, and national origin, the only plausible inference to be made is that the new law seeks to alter or expand the definition,” the lawsuit says.
A coalition of University of California faculty, students, staff, and labor unions is suing the Trump administration.
Although ostensibly aimed at preventing antisemitism in the classroom, AB 715 nowhere defines “antisemitism.”
It instructs school districts to follow Joe Biden’s U.S. National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism, which adopts the definition of antisemitism in the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA).
The IHRA lists several examples of attitudes and speech that it identifies as antisemitic, including:
*Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interest of their own nations.
*Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.
*Applying double standards by requiring of [Israel] a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.
*Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.
Both Biden’s National Strategy and the IHRA conflate criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism.
For example, they call it “antisemitic” to challenge Jewish people’s right to a majority state in an area inhabited by an equal number of Palestinians.
They require “factually accurate” instruction but punish teachers professionally for making accurate statements – such as the fact that 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled in 1948 during the creation of Israel.
This conundrum places teachers in an untenable position.
Biden’s 60-page National Strategy, which nowhere mentions “Palestine” or “Palestinians,” says:
“The U.S. Government, led by the Department of State, will continue to combat antisemitism abroad and in international fora — including efforts to delegitimize the State of Israel. As we confront antisemitism, we do so with profound respect for our democratic traditions, including free expression and speech protected by the First Amendment. We also do so with an unshakable commitment to the State of Israel’s right to exist, its legitimacy, and its security. In addition, we recognize and celebrate the deep historical, religious, cultural, and other ties many American Jews and other Americans have to Israel.”
Nevertheless, ADC alleges, AB 715 violates the First Amendment rights of teachers by being overbroad and viewpoint-discriminatory because it suggests that criticism of Israel and Zionism constitutes antisemitic discrimination.
Under this law, educators could be disciplined “if they expose their students to ideas, information, and instructional materials that may be considered critical of the State of Israel and the philosophy of Zionism.”
In addition, ADC asserts, the new law violates the First Amendment right of students to receive information in the classroom.
They will be prevented from learning about different perspectives on Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East.
“Our children’s rights are not negotiable. Compromised politicians in California do not have the right or authority to muzzle our children and strip away their First Amendment rights.
AB 715 does exactly that, it rips up the First Amendment and hands classrooms to a foreign agenda,” ADC National Executive Director Abed Ayoub said in a statement announcing the filing of the lawsuit.
“By signing this bill into law, Gov. Newsom has made it clear — he has sided with foreign interests instead of students and parents.”
ADC’s lawsuit also contends that AB 715 is unconstitutionally vague in violation of the Due Process Clause because it doesn’t define the terms it purports to regulate, opening the door to arbitrary and uneven enforcement.
Thus, teachers can’t know what they can or can’t say, so they will self-censor to avoid punishment.
“AB 715 requires teachers to provide students with only ‘factually accurate’ information,” the lawsuit says.
“Since ‘factually accurate’ instruction, in their opinions and experiences, includes ideas and information that may be interpreted as critical of the State of Israel and the project of Zionism, teachers cannot simultaneously adhere to the factual accuracy requirement while refraining from providing information that falls under the Biden National Strategy’s understanding of what constitutes antisemitism.”
AB 715 empowers anyone to anonymously file a complaint claiming that classroom content and instructional materials are critical of Israel and are thus antisemitic.
The new law provides for the appointment of an “Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator” to review the curriculum and threaten school districts with fines and teacher dismissals for refusing to discontinue the dissemination of material considered “factually inaccurate.”
The Plaintiffs
Andrea Prichett, a middle-school history teacher at a public school in Berkeley, has many Palestinian students.
As part of a class project, they research and interview their parents about events that led to their migration from Palestine. This often entails discussion about settlement, colonization, and genocide.
There have been two complaints against Prichett, including when a student mentioned Israel and Palestine as examples of modern-day colonialism.
Prichett responded that Israeli settlements in Palestine are an example of colonialism. After a long investigation, the complaints were dismissed.
The new law violates the First Amendment right of students to receive information in the classroom.
The lawsuit notes that once AB 715 goes into effect, Prichett “will be reluctant to teach about Israel and Palestine.
Palestinian citizens of Israel do not have equal rights as Jewish citizens, and Palestinians in the West Bank have almost no rights at all under Israeli occupation.
The international consensus is that Israel is illegally occupying Palestine. That is factually accurate, but also could be deemed antisemitic under AB 715, as illustrated by her previous experiences fielding complaints for saying similar things.”
In light of what happened to her in the absence of AB 715, Prichett said that “I have almost no doubt that I would be a target under the new law.”
Jews for Justice in Palestine demonstration, Baltimore, Nov. 7, 2025 (Wikimedia Commons)
Jonah Olson, a Jewish non-Zionist middle-school science teacher at a public school in Adelanto, distinguishes between Zionism and Judaism.
He believes that Zionism is a political ideology premised on the notion that Jews are superior to non-Jews, and that they have a right to be a majority in land that was inhabited primarily by Palestinians for hundreds of years, and to occupy Palestine in order to maintain that majority.
His students work on science projects. One was designed to provide food in war-torn areas after the student saw photos of moldy food delivered to Palestinians in Gaza.
Another student focused on distilling water after seeing images of a Palestinian woman in Gaza being forced to distill her own water due to lack of access to clean water.
Once AB 715 is in effect, Olson says he will be afraid to allow discussion of food preservation and water distillation in Palestine because it could be considered antisemitic by pro-Israel individuals.
Dunia Hassan, a high-school Spanish teacher at a public school in Santa Clara, was born to a Spanish mother and a Palestinian father.
Her father came to Spain after being driven out of Haifa, Palestine, in 1948, when Israeli forces occupied his village and destroyed its homes and agriculture. She grew up hearing stories of her father’s life in a refugee camp.
After the October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, her students began seeing horrific images of violence and destruction in Gaza and the West Bank, and “a significant pro-Israel bias infiltrated her school district,” the lawsuit notes.
Hassan says that after AB 715 becomes effective, she would be hesitant to assign the “My Name, My Identity” presentation that she has assigned in the past.
Palestinian boy at the separation wall between Israel and the West Bank, 2006. (FREEPAL, Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Kauser Adenwala, a high-school civics and economics public school teacher in Santa Clara, is a Muslim woman who wears a hijab.
In December 2023, after her students asked about Palestine, she assigned a project to raise awareness of modern human rights violations.
In March 2024, someone filed a complaint against her alleging that she had shown images and text that were “horrifying” and amounted to religious and/or ethnic discrimination.
One was a photo of the apartheid wall Israel had built in the West Bank to segregate Palestinians from Jewish settlers.
The investigation found insufficient evidence of unlawful discrimination but concluded that she had violated a rule requiring the teaching of diverse perspectives on controversial current events.
Another complaint against Adenwala followed a unit in which she showed a short video of an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor protesting Israel’s actions in Gaza. The survivor said she had been inspired by her Jewish ancestry.
The complaint was not sustained. Adenwala says that she has been “left with a profound sense of disillusionment,” as AB 715 “deprives students of the chance to think critically by punishing teachers who simply attempt to address the complex questions their students bring forward.”
J.J. is a 16-year-old high school student in Granite Bay, and both of her parents are Palestinian, which is central to her identity.
“As a Palestinian, she is aware that her mere existence is considered antisemitic or offensive to some, because it requires an acknowledgment that Palestinians lived in what is now Israel before creation of the modern state, and recognition that her ancestors were expelled against their will to create a Jewish majority state,” the lawsuit says.
For her speech and debate class, J.J. discussed Palestine in extracurricular competitions and has had productive conversations with pro-Israel students. In J.J.’s words, AB 715 will discourage “meaningful discussions that are necessary to learn about different perspectives so that common ground can be reached.”
Linda Khoury-Umili, a plaintiff on behalf of her children Y.U. and L.U., who are attending and will attend a public elementary school, respectively, in San Mateo County, is a Palestinian-American woman. For Arab heritage month, she did a presentation in her daughter’s class where she wore traditional Palestinian attire, served traditional Palestinian food, and taught a traditional folk dance.
“The students and teacher loved the presentation, and they all even ended up dancing at the end,” the lawsuit states. Khoury-Umili is worried about giving a similar presentation once AB 715 goes into effect.
She is afraid “it could get her into trouble as Palestinians are frequently accused of being antisemitic or offensive simply for being, since their existence naturally calls into question the idea that Israel was established in a land without people,” the lawsuit says.
Alice Finen is a plaintiff on behalf of G.F., a tenth grader at a public school in Arcata. At her other daughter’s high school graduation, Finen and her daughter were part of a group that wore keffiyehs, a symbol of support for Palestinians.
The police department received a report of disruption at the graduation. “The group had peacefully and lawfully exercised their right to show solidarity with the Palestinian people during a genocide,” according to the lawsuit.
“G.F. would like to learn about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from not only the Israeli perspective, but the Palestinian one as well. He would like to give presentations along the lines of the one his sister gave last year.”
But Finen fears that G.F. wouldn’t be able to give such a presentation because it could be considered critical of Israel and thus hostile to Jewish students, subjecting the teacher to discipline.
Request for Injunction and Declaratory Relief
ADC’s lawsuit asks the federal court to declare that the AB 715 amendments to the California Education Code violate the Teacher Plaintiffs’ rights to Due Process under the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution because they are unconstitutionally vague.
It also seeks a declaration that the amendments violate the Teacher Plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment as they are overbroad and viewpoint discriminatory.
Moreover, the lawsuit requests a declaration that the amendments violate the Student Plaintiffs’ rights under the First Amendment because they are overbroad and viewpoint discriminatory.
Finally, it seeks an injunction preventing the defendants from enforcing the AB 715 amendments.
“AB 715’s intent and effect is classroom censorship. It — probably intentionally — does not define the conduct it targets, then points schools to federal guidance that blurs legitimate criticism of a foreign state with bigotry,” ADC National Legal Director Jenin Younes said in the statement.
“That combination guarantees arbitrary punishment of educators, chills valuable classroom instruction and discussion, and deprives students of the vigorous debate the Constitution protects. We brought this case to keep classrooms free to teach the truth.”
Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is a member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers and the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.
This article was originally published on Truthout.
https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/08/california-law-illegally-muzzles-students-teachers/
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