57 Fall 2026 What is so infuriating is that the state, acting through school boards and school administrators, as well as through oversight by state-wide agencies, has the power to correct the problems that lie largely unutilized — and these defendants know it. D. Where Does the First Amendment Come into Play? In response to legal challenges to these toxic course materials and the dissemination of antisemitic propaganda in the classroom, teachers invariably raise First Amendment issues. But the law is clear that the state, acting as an employer, has the right to control school curriculum, and when a public-school teacher teaches, she does so not as a private citizen but as an employee responsible for teaching the approved curriculum. The state has the authority to compel parents to send their children to public schools, as well as the right to dictate what children will be taught. But in doing so, the corollary is that the state also bears responsibility for ensuring a safe environment — which includes the duty to act when children are being indoctrinated with antisemitic lessons or subjected to antisemitic taunts and acts of violence by fellow students, or to harassment and hostility from teachers. E. Other Legal Strategies Deployed in K-12 Cases In Santa Ana, California, the Brandeis Center filed suit under a California statute called the Brown Act that requires open meetings after the school district approved ethnic studies curricula that erased Jewish identity, promoted antisemitic narratives, and excluded Jewish voices from the curriculum process.11 We obtained internal emails in which steering committee members referred to the sole Jewish participant as a “colonized Jewish mind” and a “f---ing baby,” and discussed scheduling meetings on Rosh Hashanah to prevent the participation of the Jewish teachers on the committee — a tactic that they admitted in writing was designed to solve “the Jew problem.” We did not attack the substance of the curriculum directly but instead challenged the faulty and secret procedures that the union had followed. In the ensuing settlement, the curriculum was entirely dropped and the committee members resigned.12 In other cases, we elect to file an administrative complaint with the federal Office of Civil Rights (OCR) of the Department of Education, which has jurisdiction under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to investigate any school that receives federal funding, and has the ability to de-fund that institution. In one case in Massachusetts, we filed a federal complaint with the OCR documenting a pervasive pattern of bullying, slurs, threats, and retaliation, including Nazi salutes in school hallways, students dividing themselves into teams called “Team Auschwitz” and “Team Hamas” during athletic games, swastikas drawn in notebooks and on school property, and the use of antisemitic slurs/invectives like “kike,” “dirty Jew,” and “go to the gas chamber.”13 Significantly, the U.S. Department of Justice then followed up with a lawsuit of its own.14 It is worth highlighting, in this context, that federal law does not cover objectionable curriculum. But that does not mean that antisemitic curriculum is irrelevant to a federal civil rights claim. Our position − admittedly yet to be tested in a judicial decision − is that such course materials can be used as evidence of a hostile environment in violation of Title VI of the federal Civil Rights Act, especially when it is being promulgated by a teacher who is otherwise exhibiting hostility to Jewish or Israeli students and failing to protect them from harassment. 11. Louis D. Brandeis Ctr. for Hum. Rights Under L. v. Ana, 2024 Cal. Super. LEXIS 27529 at *3 (Cal. Super. Ct. Cnty. of Orange Sept. 8, 2023). 12. Id. 13. Supplemental Filing in Further Support of Complaint, Concord-Carlisle Reg'l Sch. Dist., U.S. Dep't of Educ. OCR File No. 01-25-1143 (filed June 30, 2025). 14. “Settlement Agreement Between the United States Department of Justice and the Concord-Carlisle Regional School District” (Apr. 16, 2026), available at https://www.justice.gov/crt/media/1436261/dl?inline
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