GUEST OPINION
CA AB 715 (Photo – leginfo.legislature.ca.gov)
I urge anyone concerned about censorship in California classrooms to immediately contact Assemblyman Mike Fong for co-authoring AB 715 which would punish California educators (including publicly elected school board members) for the ambiguous notion of promotion of discrimination. He should immediately remove his name from this chilling bill.
By Melissa Michelson
Under AB 715, which is likely headed to the State Assembly floor for a vote this week, teachers and school employees throughout California could be punished, fined, or even jailed if a student claims to feel “unsafe” based on how a lesson made them feel. If a student identifies with a certain nationality, or aligns themselves with a group based on ethnicity or religion, they could allege discrimination — and under AB 715, that alone would be enough to trigger state action.
Local school boards and superintendents would be stripped of their authority to investigate such complaints. Instead, the State Superintendent would be empowered to “directly intervene without waiting for an investigation by the school district,” effectively usurping the role of local leadership and eliminating due process.
AB 715 would ban teaching materials like books, articles and films that “promote” discrimination based on nationality or religion, redefining nationality to “include a person’s actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, or residency in a country with a dominant religion or distinct religious identity.” That opens the door to wide-ranging, subjective interpretations. Who decides what constitutes “promotion” of discrimination? According to this AB 715, only Israel would have a dedicated state compliance department tasked with policing classrooms for antisemitic content that might offend students from — or identifying with — that nation. Will this same scrutiny apply to discrimination against Russian Orthodox Christians? Or to Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Saudi Arabian, Egyptian, and Iranian Muslims, given those countries’ culturally dominant religions?
What’s next: punishing teachers for discussing U.S. history or current events? Censoring textbooks that contain uncomfortable truths about past or present administrations because someone, somewhere, deems them “offensive”? Banning books and erasing dissenting narratives from libraries?
Assemblyman Fong, do not stifle American education or engage in censorship in schools in the name of so called “educational equity.” This is not equity. This is censorship.
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