Published by JNS on 2/21/2025 The Santa Ana Unified School District—a more than 135-year-old public school district in southern California—settled a lawsuit on Feb. 20 brought by major Jewish organizations. The district, which operates 50 schools with some 36,000 students, agreed to pause several of its ethnic studies courses and remove antisemitic content from the classes and vowed to teach about Israel and the Palestinians more factually. Marci Miller, director of legal investigations at the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which brought the suit a year agowith the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, told JNS that the groups filed the motion after discovering that the district’s ethnic studies steering committee was holding meetings in direct violation of the law. “We support ethnic studies. We believe it should show all perspectives, and it should be taught according to the law and created in a transparent way,” Miller told JNS. “We understand the importance of ethnic studies in California. All perspectives should be taught.” “We don’t want things done in secrecy any longer,” she added. “The community needs to know what’s happening.” Per the suit, the district’s ethnic studies curriculum was “developed in secret and infected with antisemitism.” JNS has reported that ethnic studies programs, which California mandates under the law, can feature Jew-hatred. Under the settlement announced on Feb. 20, the California district will disband its ethnic studies steering committee permanently. (JNS sought comment from the Santa Ana Unified School District.) “The district will stop working with the outside consultant. who expressed antisemitic views,” per the Jewish groups, and the district “will allow for meaningful, substantive input from members of the public before any new courses are presented to the board for approval.” According to the agreement, the district “recognizes that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a controversial issue,” and as such, any of its classroom instruction on the subject or its curricula will adhere to its board policies which require that “all sides of a controversial issue are impartially presented.” (The district also agreed to pay about $43,000 to the plaintiffs for costs other than court fees.) Miller told JNS that the district admits no wrongdoing in the settlement, but “they agreed going forward they won’t do it again.” “Ethnic studies should never become a vehicle for sneaking dangerous, antisemitic materials into our schools,” stated Rachel Lerman, vice chair of the Brandeis Center. “That is the law, plain and simple, and we’re glad to have stopped this in Santa Ana schools.” ‘Thinly veiled antisemitism’ Per the suit, the district’s steering committee sought to schedule board approval meetings on Jewish holidays, making it tough or impossible for Jews to attend. It also used the pejorative term “Jewish question”—a concept to which the Nazis referred in the “final solution to the Jewish question”—on a committee agenda, and a consultant to the district described Israel as an instance of “settler colonialism” and promoted anti-Israel bias and antisemitic tropes on social media. Committee members also said that “Jews are the oppressors” and referred to Jewish organizations as “racist,” per the suit. Jewish staff in the district routinely complained about “thinly veiled antisemitism” from committee leaders, and a Jewish student, who attended a committee meeting, was called a “Jew-boy,” per the suit. “When I saw the evidence in discovery I was not surprised,” James Pasch, vice president of national litigation at the ADL, told JNS. “The evidence uncovered made clear the intentions behind the introductions of the material and why the Brown Act wasn’t followed.” “This lawsuit allowed us to uncover serious issues with the district’s implementation of California’s ethnic studies laws, leading to the critical results of ensuring that antisemitic material will no longer be included in these courses and improving the district’s process for adopting such future courses,” stated Roz Rothstein, cofounder and CEO of StandWithUs, whose legal department consulted on the case. ‘Loud, clear signal’ Pasch, the ADL vice president, told JNS that there is a growing trend of Jew-hatred in the kindergarten to 12th-grade school system, where, per ADL data, antisemitic incidents increased by more than 130% in 2023. He told JNS that he hopes that court cases and settlements like these will “send a loud and clear signal” that “governing bodies conduct their business in public.” “We want to make sure that people know that antisemitism, anti-Zionism and anti-Israel material have no place in our K-12 classes and curriculum,” he said. Miller hopes the case and its resolution will act as a deterrent to other districts or bad actors from repeating similar behavior. “What this means going forward is a cautionary tale to districts across the country that consider antisemitic aspects in their curriculum or a lack of transparency,” she told JNS. “This really makes a statement that hopefully deters similar behavior elsewhere.”