Despite educator opposition to AB 715 (Zbur/Addis), the California Senate and Assembly passed a bill in the middle of the night on Saturday, September 13, 2025, to establish an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator to police teachers during Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Of course, no one in the state Assembly or Senate said the word “genocide” out loud, nor acknowledged the extent to which AB 715–if signed by the Governor–might chill educators or drive them from the profession during a teacher shortage, screaming, “I can’t take this anymore! Free Palestine!”

During the floor votes, Democratic lawmakers cited a litany of problems with AB 715 legislation that could target teachers for encouraging classroom debate on Israel/Palestine. The threat of false charges of antisemitism comes at a fraught time when The Daily Californian reports UC Berkeley turned over the names of 160 students to the Trump administration investigating alleged antisemitic incidents.

AB 715 co-authors Assemblywoman Addis (D-Morro Bay), Assemblyman Zbur (D-Hollywood), Assemblyman Gabriel (D-Encino) and Senator Wiener (D-SF) promised under pressure from colleagues that they would work with skeptics, like Assemblywoman Mia Bonta, wife of Attorney General Rob Bonta, to “clean up” the bill after passage.

Grassroots activists with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), Jewish Voice for Peace-Action (JVP-Peace-Action), Arab-Resource Organizing Committee (AROC), the American-Arab Anti- Discrimination Committee (ADC), Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (LESMC), and Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) chapters amplified those objections, while citing others below:

Objections to AB 715

#AB 715 disrespects Latino, Black, Indigenous and AAPI students by establishing a singular Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator in a newly formed Office of Civil Rights. The bill fails to designate a coordinator to address other forms of discrimination, instead linking to another bill (SB 48) that only “intends” at some indeterminate time–maybe never–to address other forms of discrimination, such as attacks on immigrant students whose families are being disappeared.

The authors of AB 715 reiterated four times the urgency of protecting Israeli students in CA, yet only mentioned once concerns about Black, Brown, Indigenous and AAPI students. The bill never mentions concerns over discrimination against Palestinian-American students whose families are being killed or displaced in Gaza and the West Bank during US-backed Israel ethnic cleansing. The words “Palestine” and “Palestinian” were erased from the final iteration of the bill.

#AB 715 sets up Jewish students for resentment from other students who want and deserve equal protection under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.

#AB 715 adopts backdoor censorship by failing to explicitly define antisemitism, while supporting the National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, a document that supports the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) conflation of constitutionally-protected criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

#AB 715 threatens to defund California public education by encouraging lawsuits from right-wing extremists who cite the bill’s language requiring all instruction be “factually accurate,” a requirement that could also result in fiction book bans.

#AB 715 requires school districts remove any book, article, film, resource material that the Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator deems to be factually inaccurate. School districts that fail to take “corrective action” will be fined; their teachers threatened with dismissal.

#AB715 will siphon money from meeting urgent needs for lower class size, increased nursing staff and additional instructional resources to, instead, defend against lawsuits and implement a bureaucratic nightmare that privileges one group of students over all others and prioritizes one category of discrimination above all others.

Grandstanding

In a bizarre scene straight out of a Monty Python movie, the legislators-turned pastors-turned rabbis took to their pulpit or bimah to cheer for the establishment of an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator. This coordinator, to be appointed by the Governor, confirmed by a politically-beholden state Senate, would recommend strategies on antisemitism prevention beginning in transitional kindergarten with four-year-olds. The coordinator would also oversee teacher training that, despite legislators’ denials, would unconstitutionally link criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and elevate complaints against teachers to the California Department of Education (CDE) for school district scolding, compulsory remediation and potentially career-ending penalties.

Senator John Laird (D-SLO) told the Senate he had met with Palestinians who had concerns about AB 715, and received emails, 8-1, in opposition to the bill. Laid warned the Senate AB 715 would bankrupt school districts up and down California.

Then he voted for the bill, even though he plans to retire soon.

Senator Chris Cabaldon (D-Napa), a veritable ping pong ball, voted for AB 715 in the Senate Education Committee, but came out swinging against the bill in the Senate Appropriations Committee, only to take to the floor of the Senate to beat the drum for the expensive bureaucratic bloat he warned about previously.

Assemblymember Al Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), chair of the Assembly Education Committee, said during an informational hearing on AB 715, “fool me once, don’t fool me twice,” to suggest the State School Superintendent candidate would reverse earlier support for the bill. Muratsuchi’s opponent in the Superintendent race, educator Nichelle Henderson had long ago declared her opposition to AB715.

The best Muratsuchi could do on the Assembly floor, however, was abstain, along with nine others in the Assembly and five others in the Senate. AB 715, the top priority for the Zionist Legislative Jewish Caucus and the Jewish Public Affairs Council (JPAC), passed the Senate and Assembly with zero NO votes, but 14 abstentions, which count as opposition votes because bills must pass with majority support of the entire body.

The 14 lawmakers who resisted the Israel lobby

Those who abstained in the Assembly included Arambula (D-Fresno), Caloza (D-Los Angeles), Elhawary (D-South Los Angeles), Garcia (D-Cucamonga), Kalra (D-Santa Clara), Lee (D-Milpitas), Muratsuchi (D-Torrance), Ortega (D-Hayward) and Solache (D-Paramount). Those who abstained in the Senate included Choi (R-Irvine), Cortese (D-San Jose), Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), a co-author of AB 715, Valladares (R-Valencia) and Wahab (D-Freemont).

“Despite overwhelming opposition from teachers unions, civil rights groups, and education advocates across California, lawmakers advanced a bill that will silence Muslim, Arab, Palestinian, Jewish and other marginalized voices in our classrooms,” reads a CAIR alert to “bombard the Governor” with calls and emails to veto AB 715. This is the same Governor Gavin Newsom who has his eye on the White House and whose office, according to AB 715 author Zbur, advised backers of the bill how to write the legislation.

Kari Aist, a public school teacher in Ventura, urged Newsom not to approve “racist censorship” legislation. “At a time when academic freedom is under attack across the country, California should not set a precedent for censorship. Do what you were elected to do,” she wrote to the Governor. “Protect our educational system and veto AB 715.”

Opponents vs. supporters of AB 715

California Teachers Association (CTA), California Faculty Association (CFA), California Federation of Teachers (CFT), Association of California School Administrators (ACSA), California School Boards Association (CSBA), California Nurses Association (CNA), ACLU and over 100 grassroots organizations opposed the bill.

In contrast, the bill was top priority legislation for JPAC (Jewish Public Affairs Council), which includes at least 40 organizations, chief among them the Jewish Federation, the JCRC (Jewish Community Relations Council), Mosaic United and the Anti-Defamation League. Although JPAC mobilized fewer people to testify in support at committee hearings, the umbrella organization that raises funds to elect pro-Israel candidates scored a home run with a story about a Jewish student whose schoolmates slapped a Nazi flag on his back.

“This kind of hateful incident needs to be addressed at the local community level with restorative justice, not by a state-level Orwellian censor,” said Christine Hong, member of the UC Ethnic Studies Council and professor of Ethnic Studies at UC Santa Cruz.

Conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism

Senator Wiener, AB 715 co-author and chair of the Senate Budget Committee, told his Senate colleagues AB 715 would not equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

“Either Wiener did not read his own bill or he is misrepresenting it,” charged Hong, pointing out Wiener also co-sponsored now-abandoned legislation to rip out the guts of Ethnic Studies. “Previous iterations of AB 715 were nakedly anti-Ethnic Studies in their intention. They explicitly targeted the field in order to curb critical classroom examination of Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.”

Despite Wiener’s assurances that the bill does not conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism, the language of AB 715 repeatedly references Biden’s National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism to provide a backdoor for censorship. Page 16 of the document upholds the International Holocaust and Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition and examples that include “Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” and “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.”

In case anyone had doubts about the co-authors’ agenda, former special education teacher Dawn Addis complained about a teacher who introduced an article on Zionism that made some students feel “othered.” In reference to the need for an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, Addis repeatedly invoked a military slogan to say “we need boots on the ground.”

The censorship quarterback

Senator Sasha Perez (D-Pasadena), chair of the Senate Education Committee, acted as the linchpin in advancing AB 715 past the legislative finish line. Daughter of a mother social worker and father union electrician, Perez collaborated with the Legislative Jewish Caucus to join Mike McGuire, senate president, in promising the Israel lobby to deliver antisemitism legislation before the end of the current session in September.

Playing both sides of the street, her pedal to the end-of-session metal, Perez–the former mayor of Alhambra–held a cringe-worthy education committee hearing in which she refused to call on a teacher sitting directly in front of her waving his hand to testify in opposition. She also skipped over concerns from CTA lobbyist Seth Bramble who objected to the bill’s requirement that educators not engage in any form of advocacy. “Would it be unlawful to celebrate Black History Month?” asked Bramble.

During her committee hearing, Perez tried to prove her street bonafides by calling Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu a “war criminal.” A day later when speaking to the Senate floor, Perez championed passage of the censorship bill while sharing that certain members of the body had scolded her for criticizing Netanyahu.

The backroom deal

In a Machiavellian move, AB 715 authors reportedly made a deal with the chairs of the “diversity caucuses” – Latino, Black and AAPI –Senator,Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), Senator Weber-Pierson (D-San Diego) and AssemblymanFong (D-Alhambra)– to attach their name to AB 715 in exchange for guaranteed funding for Ethnic Studies. To date, the chairs of the state budget committees–Wiener and Gabriel, co-authors of AB 715 “have not lifted a finger to fund Ethnic Studies,” said Hong.

The diversity caucus chairs, picketed and slammed as sell outs, mid-way into the controversy tethered AB 715 to another piece of legislation, SB 48. Brokered by Isaac Bryan, vice-chair of the Legislative Black Caucus, this “intent” bill states that some day the legislature will establish Office of Civil Rights coordinators to address discrimination based on religion, race and ethnicity, gender and LGBTQ.

Rank and file resistance

Even if the Governor signs AB 715, opponents of the bill promise to mount political and court challenges while forming defense networks for teachers falsely accused of antisemitism.

“Though we are startled that California Democrats chose to turn their backs on educator unions when making educational policy, we think this represents a larger trend in turning towards overt white supremacy across the country–and we are here to resist that,” said Maya Suzuki Daniels, a Los Angeles educator with the Educator Defense Network.

“The lessons for us have been many,” said Jessica Rodarte, another educator with the defense network. “Through this struggle we learned about the legislative process and we learned about leveraging our communities. We are not alone in this struggle and it’s important to remember this. La lucha sigue y el pueblo unido jamás será vencido..”

Palestinian-American Mirvette Judeh, chair of the Arab American Caucus in the California Democratic Party, lamented the willingness of lawmakers to “strip teachers and schools of their ability to teach honestly.” She added, “At the very moment a genocide is being committed against Palestinians in Gaza, our state legislature has chosen to silence the history of Palestinians.” Judeh, who also co-chairs the party’s caucus titled California Democrats for Justice in Palestine, added, “We urgently need a champion in the current legislature willing to stand up for academic freedom and propose protections for our teachers, our schools, and our students against the harm this law will cause.”

In response to the bill’s passage, Democratic Socialists of America-Santa Barbara (DSA-SB) will flyer schools with “Know Your Rights” sheets and “Recommended Book Lists on Palestine” while joining with DSA National to refrain from endorsing candidates who accept Israel lobby money.

In a similar fashion, rank-and-file teacher members of a new union caucus, CTA Jewish and Allied Educators 4 Palestine (CTAJewsandAllies4Palestine on Instagram), will “advocate for teachers falsely accused of antisemitism for talking about Palestine in their classrooms,” said Maya, a Sacramento special education teacher. The new CTA caucus plans to also distribute book lists and lesson plans at upcoming State Council meetings attended by 800 union delegates from throughout the state. Additionally, CTA rank and file delegates, members of the 330,000-member union, hope to deny candidate endorsements to lawmakers who rammed AB 715 down the throat of the state legislature to deny students a relevant education.

Candidates subject to CTA teacher fury and a withheld endorsement are Wiener, a congressional hopeful for Pelosi’s SF House seat, McGuire, a much-talked about candidate for a redistricted northern California congressional seat, and Addis who may run for Laird’s Senate seat on the Central Coast.

Despite the legislature’s betrayal, Rodarte remains optimistic. “Our people will see the promise of Ethnic Studies for all California students. We will continue to fight for academic freedom and due process for all educators because our communities’ stories, struggles, and triumphs must be told!”

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