Published by The Jewish Weekly News of Northern California on 2/26/2026 Jewish parents in California are taking their fight against antisemitism in K-12 public schools to the very top. A lawsuit filed Thursday by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish advocacy group StandWithUs takes aim at the state of California and its top education authorities, alleging the state has allowed unchecked anti-Jewish discrimination to proliferate in public schools. The suit, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, names as defendants California itself, as well as the California Department of Education and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond. The 48-page complaint shared this week with J. alleges that the process for filing and investigating complaints of antisemitism is fundamentally broken, leaving Jewish families with little or no recourse against antisemitic discrimination and harassment. The lawsuit highlights reports of antisemitic behavior in school districts across the state, including in the San Francisco, Berkeley, Oakland, Fremont, San Jose and Los Angeles areas. NYC-based law firm Davis Polk and Michael Sherman, a partner at the L.A.-based law firm Stubbs Alderton & Markiles, are also representing plaintiffs. Lawyers for the plaintiffs said they filed the suit as a comprehensive approach to combating antisemitism in the Golden State rather than a piecemeal one focusing on specific schools or districts. “We just came to understand that this was too pervasive of an issue to attack district by district,” Marci Lerner Miller, director of legal investigations at the Brandeis Center, told J. “In California, the state has the obligation to make sure that all of its K-12 public school students receive an equal, fair, equitable education. That includes Jewish students as well. They can’t delegate that responsibility to the districts. The ultimate responsibility lies with the state of California.” Ilana Pearlman, a mother of three and a leader of the grassroots group Berkeley Jews in Schools, is a named plaintiff in the suit. Other plaintiffs have children in school districts in Santa Clara County, San Bernardino County and the Los Angeles area. The children of these families experienced overt antisemitic discrimination and harassment at school from their peers and teachers since the early days of the Israel-Hamas war, according to the lawsuit. According to the lawsuit, shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, Pearlman’s then-ninth-grade son was in an art class at Berkeley High School when his teacher displayed his latest artwork, which her son found to be “violent and antisemitic.” It depicted a Star of David over a map of Israel with a giant fist punching through it. The next day, that teacher encouraged the class to participate in a pro-Palestinian walkout, according to the lawsuit. As J. reported, some 150 Berkeley High students participated in the Oct. 18 walkout, part of a National Student Walkout for Gaza, co-organized by the San Francisco-based Arab Resources and Organizing Center. AROC, a staunch anti-Zionist activist group, led many protests throughout the Israel-Hamas war, often involving Bay Area teachers. John and Jane Smith, the pseudonyms of the San Bernardino County plaintiffs who are suing on behalf of their child in the Etiwanda School District, allege in the lawsuit that their daughter, who was a middle schooler, was choked at an after-school program by another student who yelled, “Shut your stupid Jewish ass up.” After reporting the incident to school leaders, the lawsuit alleges that the school “stonewalled them” and did nothing to provide mental health support to their daughter, who continues to suffer trauma-related anxiety, insomnia, hypervigilance and nightmares. “While painful, sharing our daughter’s story is necessary so that others can see the pervasiveness of antisemitism and school failures to protect Jewish children,” Jane Smith wrote in a statement provided to J. AB 715, the state law designed to address antisemitism in K-12 public schools, took effect on Jan. 1. The lawsuit references the new law not as an antidote to the problems it seeks to address but as a recognition of them. Quoting from the new law, the lawsuit states that “discrimination, harassment, and bullying has been so severe and pervasive that it has placed Jewish pupils at risk and limited, or completely impeded, their ability to learn or engage in school programs or activities.” Amid a surge in antisemitic incidents over the past three school years, Jewish families have filed “hundreds” of Uniform Complaint Procedures (UCPs) and appeals to the California Department of Education reporting cases of harassment, discrimination, bullying and biased teaching materials, according to the lawsuit. J. has reported several instances when families waited months for a response to their UCP, far beyond the 60-day timeline the state dictates. Their complaints often were denied, or the remedies imposed were “toothless,” according to the lawsuit, even when serious discrimination was found. “I consider it more of the foxes policing the hen house,” Ivy Chesser, a plaintiff on behalf of her son in the Campbell Union High School District in the South Bay told J. “There’s just no accountability system through the UCP process.” The California Department of Education told J. that it “cannot comment on pending litigation.” Chesser filed three UCPs over the last two years on behalf of Jewish families in her school district whose children experienced antisemitism, she told J. Only one of the UCPs was validated by the state education department, which found after an investigation that two San Jose high school teachers delivered one-sided instruction on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that “discriminated against Jewish students.” “It took a lot of follow-up and persistence on our part to get it investigated,” Chesser said of the complaint. “The UCP process, I don’t believe, was designed to address discrimination that is ongoing in the classroom.” The lawsuit against the state seeks to rectify that. Among a detailed list of remedies the lawsuit seeks for the plaintiffs is for the state to investigate and address past acts of misconduct; take proactive measures to stop future discrimination; and appoint a “committee of experts” to review all ethnic studies curricula used by schools since 2021 “for compliance with anti-bias and anti-discrimination provisions” in California’s education code. The lawsuit also calls for the state to appoint an “independent monitor or compliance officer with expertise in anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish and anti-Israel discrimination.” “The California education system is teaching the state’s children that Jewish Americans and Israelis are racists, white supremacists, oppressors, and baby-killers who should be shunned,” Kenneth Marcus, chairman of the Brandeis Center, said in a statement. “School officials have done little or nothing at all to help these children. It is the state’s legal responsibility to defend and protect innocent children from discrimination and bigotry, not foster hate as California has been doing.”