Plaintiffs who have accused Santa Ana Unified School District officials of approving ethnic studies courses tainted by antisemitism have filed a petition in Orange County Superior Court that argues the district also violated state open-meeting laws.
Attorneys representing the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Southern Californians for Unbiased Education filed the petition on Aug. 26 as part of litigation against the school district that began last year. The petition says that courses with antisemitic content were approved by the school board in a way that violated open-meetings laws, including the Ralph M. Brown Act.
“The public was deprived of its legal opportunity to address the content of these courses before the board approved them because the board failed to give the community the legally required opportunity to learn about the content and comment on it at public meetings of the board,” the petition states.
The Santa Ana district, however, expressed optimism that it will present counter-arguments before the court and ultimately win a favorable verdict.
“The district will appear in Superior Court … to defend its action of approving certain ethnic studies courses mandated by California’s Legislature as new graduation requirements,” a district statement emailed to the Southern California Record says.
In addition to allegations of failing to adhere to the state’s open-meetings requirements, the lawsuit argues that the district violated state law by offering teachers resources to teach the ethnic studies courses. The resources are alleged to negatively portray the state of Israel and the Jewish community, the district said in its statement.
The petition alleging the open-meetings violations was filed in the wake of the discovery phase of the litigation. The board kept information about the development of the ethnic studies courses under wraps so that biased content would not be discovered, according to an ADL press release.
Senior officials talked about approving the courses on Jewish holidays to prevent Jews from attending the public meetings, according to the ADL, and a steering committee hired a consultant who said that “the Zionist CA Jewish Caucus hijacked ethnic studies.”
The district’s Jewish employees have written about the “thinly veiled antisemitism” coming from the steering committee and expressed how the actions caused pain in the Jewish community, according to the ADL.
Under the terms of Assembly Bill 101, which created an ethnic studies requirement beginning with the graduating class of 2029-30, districts that choose to deviate from state standards must give the public the chance to comment on proposed course offerings before enacting them, according to the petition.
“The law is clear that until the courses passed in violation of the law are subject to lawful procedures, they should not be taught in SAUSD schools,” the lawsuit states. “Unfortunately, all but one class is currently being taught, so the need for relief is urgent.”
An ADL attorney emphasized that open-meetings laws were key to preventing such actions by public agencies.
“As the evidence shows, the district intentionally hid information from the public, to try to get away with teaching antisemitic lies to the next generation in Santa Ana,” James Pasch, the ADL’s senior director of national litigation, said in a prepared statement. “The antisemitism that infected this process sent a clear message to Jewish students and families that their voices are not welcomed, and that they were intentionally excluded.”
The lawsuit seeks a declaration from the court that the defendants violated provisions of the Brown Act and that certain resolutions approved by the school board should be invalidated. The plaintiffs are also asking for reimbursement of court costs and reasonable attorney fees.