One parent alleged that a ninth-grade teacher organized a walkout that featured chants of ‘f— the Jews,’ while others said schools punished their children for reporting anti-Semitism
A group of Jewish parents sued the California state education system on Thursday, alleging that the state’s public schools have become anti-Semitic cesspools in which “Jewish students are segregated and pulled out of classes so that teachers can spew anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda without pushback,” according to a copy of the first-of-its-kind lawsuit shared with the Washington Free Beacon.
The California State Board of Education, the California Department of Education, and state superintendent Tony Thurmond fostered a hostile environment throughout all of California, ignoring numerous reports from parents whose children had been targeted solely for being Jewish, according to the complaint. In one case, a teacher punished a 12-year-old student “because he was a Jew who dared to wear Jewish and Israeli symbols.” In another, a ninth-grade art teacher organized a walkout “in support of Palestine” that featured chants of “f— the Jews.” When one parent spoke up about the issue during a school board meeting, faculty members mocked her and called her a “Zionist Nazi bitch.”
State officials responsible for protecting students from discrimination allowed “California’s schools to indoctrinate children, from the earliest ages, to believe that Jewish Americans and Israelis—including Jewish and Israeli classmates—are racists, white supremacists, and oppressors who should be shunned,” the lawsuit states.
The case documents numerous anti-Semitic incidents across the state, according to the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, which is handling the lawsuit alongside the pro-Israel advocacy group StandWithUs. It marks the first time legal advocates have sued an entire statewide system over pervasive anti-Semitic harassment and could set a precedent for those in other states to follow suit. Anti-Semitism in California schools, though, has been particularly prevalent since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel. The San Francisco teachers’ union, for instance, endorsed a curriculum that claimed many allegations of anti-Semitism are “fabricated” and used to silence pro-Palestinian activists. The public school system in Berkeley received a federal complaint in 2024 over its alleged failure to stem an escalating series of anti-Semitic incidents that culminated in hallway chants of “kill the Jews.” Even before Oct. 7, the state’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum included a lesson that described Jews as having “experienced conditional whiteness and privilege.”
The California State Legislature passed a bill in late 2025 acknowledging “well documented” cases that “Jewish and Israeli American pupils across California are facing a widespread surge in antisemitic discrimination, harassment, and bullying.” Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.), though, was silent on a coordinated bomb plot that a radical anti-Israel group had planned before federal law enforcement foiled the operation, and is facing a lawsuit from a former California National Guard commander who says Newsom “facilitated” an anti-Semitic campaign that resulted in the former commander’s wrongful termination. The Brandeis lawsuit implicates at least one individual vying to replace Newsom in this year’s gubernatorial election: Thurmond, the state superintendent, declared his candidacy back in September 2023, though polling averages have him with 2 percent of the primary vote.
The Jewish families who collectively filed “hundreds of formal” complaints with their respective schools and the California Department of Education maintain that state school administrators were aware of anti-Semitic harassment but either recommended segregating Jewish students from the rest of the class or swept the reports under the rug. The alleged behavior violates California’s constitution, which provides protection for minority groups, as well as federal and state civil rights laws, according to the lawsuit.
Plaintiff Melissa Alexander, for instance, said a teacher repeatedly punished her 12-year-old son solely because he wore clothing that could identify him as Jewish and a Star of David necklace. The teacher, whose name is not included in the filing, “openly proclaimed that Zionists are the enemy” and “had a public social media account filled with virulently anti-Semitic and anti-Israel content.” When Alexander presented this evidence to school administrators and reported that the teacher had mistreated her child, the officials “actively chose to ignore it.” Instead, the school put the student “into new classes in the middle of the school year.”
A similar incident occurred in the weeks after Oct. 7 at Berkeley High School, where plaintiff Ilana Pearlman’s ninth-grade son endured anti-Israel diatribes from an art teacher who “boasted to the class about his latest artwork: an image of barbed wire fences in the shape of a Star of David with a giant fist punching through it,” according to the complaint. The same instructor allegedly used his classroom to promote a walkout “‘in support of Palestine,’ spending time and resources to advertise the demonstration.” The event that followed “was filled with chants that included, ‘Fuck the Jews.’”
When Pearlman reported this behavior to school administrators, those officials allegedly pulled her son from the class and sent him to learn separately in the school’s library and student health center. “The school’s decision to punish the targets of anti-Semitism rather than the perpetrators made a lasting impression on” Pearlman’s son, who now hides his Jewish identity in fear, the filing states.
At Daniel Pearl Magnet High School in Los Angeles—named after a Jewish journalist slaughtered by Islamists in 2002—a teacher repeatedly subjected a student to alleged pro-Hamas activism inside the classroom.
Plaintiffs Dawn and Michael Rosenthal said that their son’s honors chemistry teacher littered the classroom with anti-Israel propaganda. The Rosenthals reported the conduct to Los Angeles Unified School District, which responded with a statement that “the teacher was refusing to remove” anti-Israel posters, according to the complaint. By Oct. 7, 2025—the two-year anniversary of the Hamas attacks—the chemistry teacher allegedly wrote on the blackboard, “‘Oy vey, it’s free’ with an arrow pointing to ‘FREE PALESTINE.’”
As in other cases, the school pulled Rosenthal’s son from the class and ordered him to take a “remote online chemistry course,” as well as “additional academic burdens to accommodate his chemistry teacher’s anti-Semitism.” The teacher in question was only removed from the classroom after stapling a student’s arm in an unrelated incident that carried felony charges.
The lawsuit also included examples of anti-Israel teaching materials used in California classrooms. A curriculum for kindergarten through third grade, for instance, includes links to a read-aloud book called “P Is for Palestine.” It states that “I is for Intifada,” defining it merely as “rising up for what is right, if you are a kid or a grownup.”
Teachers in Oakland, meanwhile, used an unauthorized December 2023 “teach-in” to have students draw “The Zionist leaders of Israel receiv[ing] money and support to conduct [a] two-tiered (unfair) system where Palestinians are mistreated and attacked.”
Neither the California Department of Education nor the California State Board of Education responded to requests for comment.
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