Santa Ana Unified School District is being sued for allegedly violating open meeting laws and creating classes for its ethnic studies program in secret – courses that Jewish advocacy groups allege contain antisemitic material.
Now, school district officials are heading to court Thursday to defend the classes they approved last year after grappling with how to teach the history of Israel and Palestine in a way that both communities consider accurate and fair.
Jewish advocacy groups, including the Anti-Defamation League, allege district leaders violated the state’s open meeting law when putting the courses together to hide antisemitic material.
To read the lawsuit filing, click here.
It comes after Santa Ana Unified School District officials created courses meant to teach world history after instituting an ethnic studies graduation requirement ahead of the state in 2020.
Marci Miller, director of Legal Investigation with the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law – a plaintiff in the lawsuit – said in a Thursday phone interview that efforts to keep the public out of the creation of these courses were deliberate by district officials.
“With discovery, we learned that there certainly was intent to exclude the Jewish community from any consideration of the curriculum, and it is the right of the public in general to be included in these things,” Miller said.
“There cannot be these secret meetings, secret development of curriculum behind closed doors in a legislative body, and that’s what we have here.”
The lawsuit alleges a host of antisemitic material in numerous courses.
“Based on the materials available to the public (and it is unclear whether this is everything), at least five ethnic studies courses approved by the SAUSD Board, including ethnic studies courses in World History, English, and World Geography, include one-sided anti-Israel screeds and propaganda that teaches students—falsely—that Israel is an illegitimate, ‘settler colonial,’ ‘racist’ country that ‘stole’ land from a pre-existing country called Palestine and engages in unprovoked warfare against Palestinian Arabs,” alleges the lawsuit.
In response to Voice of OC questions last week, school district spokesman Fermin Leal texted a statement denying the allegations made in the lawsuit and said the district will defend its actions in court in the upcoming weeks.
“The District denies these claims and will present counter arguments and facts to the Court for consideration and is optimistic that the Court will ultimately find in favor of the District,” reads the statement.
The lawsuit alleges that district officials violated open meeting laws to prevent pushback from the Jewish community by not properly describing agenda items on the courses and failing to protect community members from harassment at school board meetings.
Advocacy groups also allege the district held private steering committee meetings to develop the courses and their attorneys say they have obtained text messages between two top district officials discussing approving courses on Passover to avoid input from the Jewish community.
The groups are now calling on an Orange County Superior Court Judge to bar the district from teaching classes they say were unlawfully approved in secret and create courses through a public process that allows for community input.
James Pasch, senior director of National Litigation for the Anti-Defamation League, said in a news release last month state law requires government bodies to hold open meetings to avoid these types of situations.
“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. 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,” he said.
Rashad Al-Dabbagh, Executive Director of the Arab American Civic Council, defended the courses at last week’s school board meeting and said it’s important to teach ethnic studies so students can learn about the history of marginalized communities including Palestinians.
“The targeting of this district is part of a broader smear campaign designed to silence our voices and erase Palestinians from spaces like Santa Ana School District,” he said.
“Antisemitism is real. Anti-Palestinian hate is real. But you don’t fight hate by erasing Palestinians from the curriculum and from public discourse,” Al-Dabbagh said.
In court filings late last month, attorneys for the Jewish advocacy groups allege a staff member said school board members Carolyn Torres and Rigo Rodriguez have run committee meetings like a dictator.
They also allege a committee leader called a Jewish member a “colonized Jewish mind,” committee leaders agendized an item titled the “Jewish question” for a closed door committee meeting and that Jewish staff members raised private concerns about antisemitism from committee leaders.
Rodriguez said in an email response to questions that he was advised not to make public statements on the lawsuit.
The rest of Santa Ana Unified School Board members did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
In a response letter attached to the lawsuit filing from district lawyers, officials denied violating the Brown Act – California’s chief open meeting law – arguing they gave enough information on agenda items.
“The public was sufficiently alerted that the ethnic studies curriculum was going to be provided to the Board as information and the public had the right to comment on the curriculum,” lawyers wrote in August 2023.
“The listing of each curriculum by name and including the ethnic studies term in the description is descriptive enough to give the public notice of what was going to be discussed by the Board.”
In the letter, lawyers also said a review of a district meeting showed no incidents of intimidation and that when public speakers were interrupted school board members intervened.
“While there were a few inappropriate comments made, overall the meeting was orderly and peaceful given the strong emotions on both sides of the discussion related to the Israel/Palestine conflict,” reads the letter.
Lawyers also wrote the board intends to enforce its civility policy more vigorously at future meetings.
Teaching About Palestine & Israel in Santa Ana
The Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee and The Brandeis Center filed the lawsuit last year months after district officials adopted two courses with lessons on Palestine and Israel.
The courses approved in April 2023 included watching a video from B’Tselem – an Israeli Human Rights group – entitled Firing Zone 918 – An Exercise in War Crimes and reading from a book called titled “The Dark Side of Democracy: Explaining Ethnic Cleansing” by Michael Mann, a research professor of Sociology at UCLA.
The materials and curriculum drew criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and the Jewish Federation of Orange County as being one-sided and antisemitic, which prompted district leaders to reconsider their approach to the courses.
In response, Palestinian and Arab American advocacy groups urged district leaders to keep the course as it is, arguing that it was not antisemitic but factual and fairly presented Palestinian voices and the realities of life in Gaza and the West Bank.
[Read: Santa Ana School District Struggles With How to Teach Palestinian & Israeli History]
Basha Jamil, a policy manager with the Council on American Islamic Relations, said at last week’s school board meeting that understanding the plight of Palestinians is a crucial aspect to ethnic studies.
“Our education should not be shaped by political agendas that try to silence the reality of ongoing oppression and genocide,” she said.
“We absolutely need to teach about antisemitism. However, we must ensure that legitimate criticism of the State of Israel isn’t conflated with antisemitism.”
Miller said their lawsuit’s focus is on the way the courses were created – not the content.
But she said some of the materials demonize Israel and Jewish people.
She also said to teach ethnic studies properly, districts should follow the state’s model curriculum and should not promote bias or bigotry.
“We support ethnic studies and all voices being heard, and nobody’s trying to silence anyone’s voices here,” Miller said.
“We’re just trying to make sure the entire community and the entire public has rights and access to what’s being developed as they should be.”
Hosam Elattar is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at helattar@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @ElattarHosam.
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