(Last Updated October 2nd, 2025)

In the spring of 2025, a concerted effort by the California Teachers Association and a broad coalition of over 40 organizations successfully defeated AB 1468, a malicious bill designed to censor Palestine and Palestinian narratives from the state’s Ethnic Studies curriculum. The bill was ultimately withdrawn by its authors, who had sent it on a political suicide mission with zero chance of passing committee.

However, the withdrawal of AB 1468 didn’t result in a victory, but a tactical retreat. Behind closed doors during the Mother’s Day weekend, lawmakers gutted AB 715—a bill originally intended to address attorney misconduct—and repurposed it into a new measure focused on antisemitism. This move demonstrated a clear disregard for community voices and a procedural abuse of the system.

Within just a few days, it was reassigned to the Assembly Education Committee for a special hearing, bypassing the standard process for public input (EdSource, 2025). Due to the rushed timeline, the Committee’s Advocacy Position Portal—used to collect and review support and opposition letters—was not activated, effectively silencing official community opposition.

This procedural manipulation undermines democratic accountability and dismisses the concerns of communities who themselves face harassment, bullying, and discrimination in schools.

On May 29th, every single California Assemblymember—Democrat and Republican—voted to pass AB 715 (full bill text available here), the bill designed to censor Palestine, silence teachers, and gut ethnic studies under the false banner of “fighting antisemitism.” 

Despite overwhelming opposition from educators, students, and civil rights advocates, our “representatives” ignored their constituents and our communities as they fast-tracked AB 715, a bill that:

• Punishes schools for teaching Palestinian history.
• Wastes public funds to police speech instead of supporting students.
• Led by anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab organizations seeking to silence us.
• Ignores anti-Palestinian racism entirely, while being drafted without input from Arab, or impacted communities.

This isn’t just censorship—it’s a cover-up.

Furthermore, AB 715 dangerously seeks to redefine key terms such as “nationality” and “religion” in vague and expansive ways. This opens the door to the criminalization and punishment of students and educators who speak out against state violence or express opposition to policies perceived as genocidal or discriminatory. Rather than promoting safety and inclusion, AB 715 risks institutionalizing censorship and repression under the guise of combating hate.

While Israel bombs Gaza’s schools with U.S.-funded weapons, while it starves millions with U.S.-backed blockades, and while it commits documented war crimes with impunity—our politicians are scrambling to make sure you never learn about it and sided with censorship over justice.

As of October 2025, the repressive and discriminatory bill made its way to Governor Newsom’s desk despite the heavy opposition from every major educational association and labour union in California, along with our coalition that holds over 100 human right organizations, racial justice, interfaith, civil rights, and pro Palestine organizations. 

Key issues with this bill:  

• Fails to define antisemitism. By failing to define antisemitism, the authors of the bill make it easier to conflate criticism of the state of Israel and its actions with antisemitism.  
• Changes the definition of ‘nationality’ to stifle any and all criticism of specific governments. It would redefine nationality to include “residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity.” This redefinition has been used in interpreting federal Civil Rights Act Title VI, where religion is not mentioned as a protected category in education. But it is not needed in California law, which already protects students from religious discrimination. 

If AB 715 were enacted into law it could be used to prevent fair and open discussion of many situations where the actions of a nation with a dominant religion are the subject of a lesson. Some possible examples:

• This could lead to characterizing educators’ discussion of foreign governments that practice severe discrimination against minority populations (such as Israel, India, Myanmar and many more) as discriminatory against people from those countries and thus chill educational speech. 

• It could lead Christians with white nationalist sympathies to claim discrimination if slavery or the genocide of Native Americans is discussed in the classroom as related to the perpetrators’ religious beliefs, or pupils of German ancestry to object to materials about the Nazi Holocaust. 

• Example on Japanese internment shared by an educator during the Assembly Education Committee hearing on May 14, 2025:  “In our EIGHTH GRADE, OUR APPROVED CURRICULUM HAS A FANTASTIC UNIT ON JAPANESE AMERICAN INTERNMENT, A TERRIBLY SHAMEFUL MOMENT IN OUR HISTORY, ONE OF GOVERNMENT FAILURE, RACIST ASSUMPTIONS, AND MASS INCARCERATION. SHOULD I BE PREVENTED FROM TEACHING ABOUT MANZANAR BECAUSE THE ACTIONS OF WHITE AMERICANS DURING WORLD WAR TWO MIGHT BE INTERPRETED AS SUBJECTING A WHITE PUPIL TO UNLAWFUL DISCRIMINATION BASED ON THEIR COUNTRY OF ORIGIN, THE USA”

• Creates an exclusive role that doesn’t exist for any other type of discrimination. It would create an antisemitism coordinator, a position that does not currently exist for any other ethnic or religious group.

• Employs the mechanism for right-wing style book bans. It says local school authorities may not “adopt, approve or allow … textbook, instructional material, supplemental instructional material, or curriculum for classroom instruction” that a student may find discriminatory – a huge opening for bans on books and other content that someone finds controversial.

• Targets teachers and school boards, specifically. Finally, the bill includes language to “strengthen the Uniform Complaint Process (UCP)” and expands it to include school board members which will result in a literal witch-hunt of teachers.

• Redundant waste of resources during a historical state budget deficit.  An analysis of the bill by the Assembly Education Committee consultant noted that almost everything in AB 715 is already covered in existing state law — effectively rendering the bill redundant and a waste of resources when California is already facing a massive $12 billion budget deficit. 

• Key legislative champions have problematic track records on demonizing criticism of Israel. Three legislators (Senator Scott Wiener, Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, and Assemblymember Rick Zbur) have been the primary champions behind both AB 1468 and AB 715, and their record on demonizing Palestinian advocacy, conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, and attempting to get people fired or canceled over both speech critical of Israel and attempting to divest from Israel must be examined to understand how AB 715 could potentially be weaponized. 

• This bill undermines the collaborative process of curriculum development and sets a dangerous precedent for legislative overreach in California’s public education curriculum when it comes to politically contentious issues.
  • The legislature is not where the public education curriculum should be determined or worked out. Curriculum decisions have statewide implications and changes need a regular process that includes educators, parents, stakeholders, legislators, textbook authors, and other stakeholders. 
  • This bill circumvents all of that and gives power to stakeholders in the legislative process alone, namely legislators and lobbyists. 
  • Democratic leaders in California are using tactics similar to those of Moms for Liberty in red states to circumvent the community, parents, educators and experts.

Here is the latest update from Mohamed Shehk the Organizing Director at AROC: 

Key points of what led to where we are today: 

• May 2025: AB 1468 Becomes AB 715. Back in May, the pro-Israeli interests were backing AB 1468, a bill that was focused on censorship specifically of Ethnic Studies in schools. During an Assembly Education Committee hearing in May, the authors withdrew AB 1468, and introduced AB 715 through a last minute “gut and amend” maneuver. While we welcomed the fact that AB 1468 was being laid to rest, AB 715 was far worse; it was no longer just about censoring Ethnic Studies curriculum around Palestine, it was now expanded to censor *any* material or discussion in the classroom regarding Palestine.
  • At the time, AB 715 was composed primarily of vague “intent language,” so the Assembly Education Committee passed it to give the authors the “benefit of the doubt” and more time to actually craft the bill.
• July 2025: First Substantive Version of AB 715 was Unabashedly pro-Zionist and pro-Censorship. In July, and in advance of a Senate Education Committee hearing, the authors introduced new substantive language to AB 715. The bill was blatantly repressive, and the authors didn’t even try to hide the fact that this was nothing but pro-Israeli legislation. For instance, the bill stipulated that when schools adopted instructional materials, they were not allowed to “introduce or promote antisemitic content, including inaccurate historical narratives such as labeling Israel a settler colonial state.“
• July 2025: AB 715 is Withdrawn from Committee for being so Problematic and Widely Opposed. Because of how egregiously repressive and unconstitutional the bill was, AB 715 was withdrawn before it even got a chance to be heard and voted on in the Senate Education Committee. If it had gone through the committee, our coalition’s intel says it would have been killed.
• Aug-Sept 2025: AB 715 Goes Through Negotiations, Despite Every Educational Union/Association Opposing It, Including the ACLU.
• Sept 2025: A New Version of AB 715 is Reintroduced to the Senate Education Committee, Just Three Days Before End of Legislative Session. AB 715 was completely re-written. However, instead of now explicitly stating that criticism of Israel is antisemitic and banned from the classroom, it was re-written to make IHRA Definition of Antisemitism a basis for California schools “on how to identify, respond to, prevent, and counter antisemitism.” The bill does this by pointing to Biden’s 2023 document on antisemitism, which itself embraces the IHRA definition – a definition that has been widely rejected because it conflates virtually all expression/education critical of Israel with antisemitism.
  • With less than 24 hours notice, a Senate Education Committee was called for AB 715 to be voted on. In a despicable fast tracked effort, Committee Members did not meaningfully engage the opposition, address concerns, and simply moved to rubber-stamp the bill. The only exception was Senator Cortese, who took a principled position and abstained.
  • The bill was then quickly referred to Senate Appropriations Committee.
  • The bill was given waivers and DID NOT go through the Senate Judiciary Committee, despite making significant changes to the state’s Education Code and having severe concerns raised around constitutionality.
  • The bill was given waivers and DID NOT go through Assembly Education Committee, despite being an education bill. The Chair of the Assembly Education Committee, Al Muratsuchi criticized the authors by saying they had not acted in good faith with the Assembly Education, and Bonta stated: “We’ve been robbed of the opportunity to demonstrate that people can trust us in this process.”
  • In fact, the bill bypassed and DID NOT go through ANY of the Assembly committees. In addition to Education, it was supposed to have been heard and voted on by Appropriations and Judiciary, which it did not.
  • From there, it was essentially given a rubber-stamp on the Assembly and Senate Floors, with only a handful of legislators that abstained and did not support it.

CALL TO ACTION

Please join us to raise our voices to Newsom and urge him to VETO this dangerous legislation. In addition to the fact that this is a Trumpian bill seeking to censor Palestinian perspectives and criticism of Israel while Israel is committing genocide in Gaza, Newsom should also oppose AB 715 on the shameful, undemocratic process alone.

• Go to www.gov.ca.gov/contact

• Choose from the drop down “Active Bill”
• Scroll to the bill “AB 715 – Educational equity: discrimination: antisemitism prevention”