Bill that would allow parents to sue teachers over ‘antisemitic conduct’ moves to governor’s desk

PHOENIX — The Arizona House of Representatives passed a final version of HB 2867, the Antisemitism in Education Act, on Wednesday, the last hurdle it faced before going to the Governor’s Office for approval.

If signed by Gov. Katie Hobbs, the bill would allow students and their families to hold educators civilly liable for promoting antisemitic ideology in the classroom. Arizona teachers would be responsible for their own court costs. Antisemitism, according to the bill, is based on a working definition from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.

“A teacher may have an interaction with a student in which a student may perceive that they were being taught something antisemitic, could go home and tell a parent, a parent could hire an attorney, and the teacher would be served paperwork saying they need to go to court because they’ve been accused,” said Arizona Education Association President Marisol Garcia.

“There’s no due process that happens at their work. There’s no conversation that happens with the parent and the student. There’s nothing that happens within the institution that would serve as a mediator to find out what happened.”

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While critics have noted that the bill specifically addresses antisemitism and not other forms of discrimination, state Rep. Walt Blackman, R-Snowflake, referred to the bill as a “gateway” to protecting other communities.

“This is a bill that lays the pathway so other things like this cannot happen again,” Blackman said on the floor. “If you study your history, this sort of thing in schools were happening to Black Americans, and there wasn’t a law to protect Black Americans from anti-Black speech in schools, particularly in the South.”

While members of both chambers mostly voted along party lines, with the Republican majority generally in favor, a few politicians crossed the aisle from both sides. State Sen. Jake Hoffman, R-Queen Creek, told Cronkite News in a prepared statement that while he supports the intention of the bill, he voted against it when it came before the Arizona Senate May 28 because of free speech concerns.

“The bill was poorly drafted in that it used an extremely problematic and open-ended IHRA definition of antisemitism that was highly subjective, with far too great a possibility of being weaponized against free speech,” Hoffman said. “Anything that defines antisemitism in open-ended terms will invariably be used as a political weapon at some point.”

In the House, Assistant Minority Leader Nancy Gutierrez, D-Tucson, argued on the floor that the bill did not include private schools and raised concerns about teachers wanting to work in Arizona.

“We have an extreme shortage of teachers and passing a law that allows students to sue their teachers personally is going to make that even worse,” she said, adding that “if we truly want to keep antisemitism out-of-schools … that should mean all schools everywhere, not just public schools.”

State Rep. Alma Hernandez, D-Tucson, broke from the majority of her party when she co-sponsored the bill. Identifying as a member of the Jewish community, she referenced seeing a Palestinian flag in the window of a school near her home.

“It is very clear that there are many individuals who do not understand that antisemitism is a serious problem,” she said from the floor. “I would love to know what was being taught in that classroom … because that flag is not a flag of a country, for those of you who confuse it, it is a political statement which should not be allowed in our public schools.”

In a press release after the vote, state Rep. Michael Way, R-Queen Creek, urged Hobbs to sign the bill into law.

“Arizona’s students and teachers deserve to learn and work in an environment free from antisemitic hate,” Way said in the statement. “This bill ensures schools are places of learning, not battlegrounds for political indoctrination.”

The AEA, however, is lobbying for a veto. Garcia said the bill would have adverse effects on teacher retention in Arizona, expressing that “antisemitism” is poorly defined.

“It also stokes fears of educators who might be teaching geography, history that they may not be able to teach authentic history of the United States if they don’t have the ability to discuss it at a site level with that family, with that student,” Garcia said.

For more stories from Cronkite News, visit cronkitenews.azpbs.org.