Published by JNS on 2/26/2026 California has failed to enforce its antidiscrimination laws against Jew-hatred in K-12 public schools, according to a lawsuit that the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs and Davis Polk and Wardwell filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Thursday. The suit “arises out of the persistence and prevalence of antisemitism throughout school districts within the state of California,” according to Jeffrey Lang, senior litigation counsel at the Brandeis Center. “The need to sue the state arose out of the wholesale failure of the state to ensure that districts were taking antisemitism claims seriously, investigating them and taking corrective action,” Lang told JNS. “We felt compelled to sue the state for systemic, effective change.” “The state bears ultimate responsibility for public education, including ensuring that children attend schools in an environment free of discrimination,” he said. The suit also lists the California Education Department, State Board of Education and Tony Thurmond, state superintendent of public instruction, as defendants. (JNS sought comment from the state attorney general’s office and education department.) The attorneys are representing parents of Jewish students in the state’s public schools and the Brandeis Center’s Coalition to Combat Antisemitism, a nonprofit with nearly 400 members. The suit alleges that California schools are “segregating Jewish students” in response to antisemitic incidents, including “A.D.,” a Jewish student at Berkeley High School. A.D.’s mother, Ilana Pearlman, is one of the plaintiffs. She reported her concerns to the school about her son’s art teacher, who bragged a week after Oct. 7 about his art depicting “barbed wire fences in the shape of a Star of David with a giant fist punching through it.” During class time, the teacher also promoted an anti-Israel walkout that included protesters chanting expletives at Jews. The school responded by taking A.D. out of the class and having him “sit alone in the library,” the suit alleges. “The child was denied classroom instruction to protect the teacher’s ability to continue to espouse antisemitic ideology,” Lang told JNS. The suit also alleges that at the beginning of the 2025 school year, “B.R.,” a student at Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in the Los Angeles area, dealt with an honors chemistry teacher with a “free Palestine” poster in his classroom. On the two-year anniversary of Oct. 7, the teacher allegedly wrote on the whiteboard, “Oy vey, it’s free” and an arrow pointing to the words “free Palestine.” Michael and Dawn Rosenthal, B.R.’s parents and plaintiffs in the suit, met with the principal to discuss the teacher, but the school responded by having B.R. take a non-honors online class, according to the suit. “He’s denied in-class instruction in an honors class in order to protect a chemistry teacher’s espousal of antisemitic tropes,” Lang told JNS. The teacher was later removed from the school after he allegedly stapled a student’s arm and was arrested, the suit states. B.R. transferred to the school in 2024 after experiencing antisemitism at the Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, which is also in the Los Angeles area. In November 2022, while running on a track during a physical education class, a student shouted, “let’s get the Jew.” B.R. was tripped and beaten unconscious, per the suit. B.R.’s mother told the nurse to call an ambulance, but she refused, according to the suit. “Not only did the school not suspend any of the attackers, it continued to put some of the attackers in B.R.’s classes,” it states. The suit also alleges that teachers in California public schools have been using antisemitic materials in class. One of examples cited is the Oakland Education Association’s curriculum for transitional kindergarten that uses the book “P is for Palestine,” which states that “I is intifada.” The book defines intifada as “rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or a grown-up,” the suit states. “Omitted from this narrative is that ‘intifada’ has traditionally been used to describe violent conflict,” the suit states, “conflict that, in most recent years, has targeted Jewish civilians and celebrated their murders.” Branham High School in San Jose, Calif., has a 12th grade ethnic literature curriculum that uses “a fringe, extremist, anti-Zionist rabbi” to “normalize” discrimination against Zionist Jews, portray Israel as the “oppressor” and justify Oct. 7, according to the suit. That curriculum also included a slide on “genocide of Palestinians,” the suit alleges. “It would be one thing if school administrators and districts properly reprimanded and course corrected these unauthorized and unlawful discriminatory teachings,” the suit states. “However, there is no evidence that the districts and administrators did anything, aside from toothless training requirements, to address and correct the teachers’ behavior and remediate the harm to students.” ‘Not complicated’ Lang told JNS that “hundreds of complaints” have been filed through the state system to report antisemitic incidents but most don’t get investigated. Those that are investigated are usually not completed in a timely manner and rarely result in any sort of action, he said. AB 715, California’s recent law addressing Jew-hatred in K-12 schools is “a helpful step in the right direction, and we were pleased to see it, but it doesn’t add any additional enforcement mechanisms, and it’s not even fully operational right now,” Lang told JNS. “I think the noteworthy part of AB 715 is the legislature’s acknowledgment that antisemitism is a real danger in California public schools and its acknowledgment that Jewish children are being ostracized and vilified in the public schools,” he said. “They’ve recognized the problem, but the arm of the state responsible for enforcing the current laws, which are adequate, have been lacking.” Jewish families are increasingly leaving California public schools “not because they want to go elsewhere, but they have no choice,” according to Lang. If the state were to enforce its laws properly, it “would demand that school districts follow statutory rules, which require complaints to be investigated promptly,” he told JNS. “The state would direct the school districts to stop punishing Jewish children when they complain about discrimination, forbidding, for example, school districts from placing Jewish children in a segregated classroom to protect them from active antisemitism that’s going on throughout the school.” The state ought to tell schools to take “action against teachers and administrators who are allowing or promoting antisemitism,” according to Lang. “It’s not complicated,” he said. “It’s doing what we would expect the state to do if the discrimination had involved any other minority group or indeed any other violation of law.”