Despite opposition by pro-Palestinian groups, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law several bills prioritized by the California Legislative Jewish Caucus that focus on Jewish student safety, Holocaust and genocide education, anti-discrimination training at public schools and colleges and “hate littering” on private property.
After a rocky year in which college campuses became sites of intense confrontation during pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests, members of the Jewish caucus introduced bills intended to prevent future incidents that endanger or isolate Jewish students.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in California raised objections to three of the four bills in an Oct. 3 statement, saying they could target pro-Palestinian activity. Jewish Voice for Peace California, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center and Central Coast Antiwar Coalition also signed off on the statement.
SB 1287, authored by State Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), would require public universities to adopt rules that explicitly prohibit “violent, harassing, intimidating, or discriminatory conduct” that creates a hostile campus environment or limits a person’s access to education if such rules are not already in their codes of student conduct.
CAIR expressed concern that the rules universities will incorporate would be “enforced in unspecified ways.” The group argued that even peaceful speech in support of the Palestinian cause could be stifled.
State Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) told J. that the trustees of the California State University and regents of the University of California have expressed a commitment to ensuring all schools in their system comply with the new law.
“We just want to make sure that our college campuses are taking seriously that students should be able to be on campus without being harassed, intimidated, bullied, threatened with violence,” Wiener said. “We’re gonna watch closely to make sure” that the law is implemented.
AB 2925, co-authored by Assemblymembers Laura Friedman (D-Burbank) and Josh Lowenthal (D-Long Beach), requires curricula of DEI and anti-discrimination trainings given to college students to include information on the five most targeted groups in the state.
“What we’ve seen is that Jews are frequently left out of these trainings, even though we are among the most targeted groups,” Wiener told J. “So we just want to make sure that you don’t have bias in the creation of DEI programs.”
The “top five” rankings are contained in the California Department of Justice’s annual “Hate Crime in California” report, which revealed that anti-Jewish incidents made up 14.7% of all reported hate crimes in California last year.
The law’s bill analysis also cites data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s January 2024 report on hate crime offenses at schools, and a 2020 dataset from the National Center for Education Statistics. An FBI report just released in late September showed that Jews were targeted in 15% of all nationally reported hate crimes throughout 2023, with 2,069 anti-Jewish incidents.
CAIR said the data collected by the organizations cited in the bill analysis is unreliable, and undercounts incidents of hate and bias against Muslims. The FBI’s September data showed that Muslims were the second-most targeted religious group in the U.S. in 2023, reporting a total of 283 incidents.
SB 1277, authored by Sen. Henry Stern (D-Calabasas) and sponsored by the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California and S.F.-based Jewish Family and Children’s Services, establishes the California Teachers Collaborative for Holocaust and Genocide Education as a state program. Its focus will be on facilitating professional development and curriculum resources for teachers and ensuring that lessons are consistent with existing, mandated content standards. Instructional material also will highlight other genocides, including those of the Armenian, Indigenous American, Rwandan and Uyghur peoples.
Those opposed to SB 1277 called it “a dangerous bill that would put teacher training and curriculum development about genocide education for grades 7-12 in the hands of outside, anti-Palestinian groups.”
Last month, an antisemitism training program for high school teachers in the San Francisco Unified School District was canceled and rescheduled when the same groups who opposed SB 1277, as well as teachers and the SFUSD teachers’ union, took issue with the American Jewish Committee leading the training.
Wiener expects similar challenges will arise as the law gets implemented throughout the 937 school districts in California.
“JVP and some of these other groups, CAIR, will absolutely lobby against any effort to acknowledge the experience of Jews, to acknowledge the existence of antisemitism,” he said.
AB 3024 is the only bill that CAIR did not object to, though it has attracted criticism from other groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the First Amendment Coalition.
The new law clarifies the definition of intimidation by threat of violence present in the 1976 Ralph Civil Rights Act to include “hate littering”: the distribution of written materials on private property intended to make targeted individuals fear for their safety.
The bill was introduced by Assemblymember Chris Ward (D-San Diego) after reports of hate-littering incidents targeting Jewish communities throughout Southern California. This new law would allow victims to seek damages for civil penalties from offenders.
Newsom signed AB 3024 on Sept. 25, and the remaining three bills on Sept. 28, two days before the deadline to sign or veto legislation. The Legislature adjourned on Aug. 31 and will reconvene on Dec. 2 for the 2025-26 session.