Last fall, Lee Miller, a special education teacher at Aptos Middle School in San Francisco, checked his work email after class and suddenly felt sick to his stomach.
United Educators of San Francisco, the teachers union that Miller belonged to, had emailed a flyer to members promoting an “international day of action” on Oct. 6, 2024. It stated: “One year of genocide, one year of resistance.”
Behind the bold black and red text was an illustration of a person wearing a kaffiyeh across their face and holding a Palestinian flag. To Miller, who is Jewish, the image resembled that of a Hamas terrorist and the word “resistance” referenced the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas massacre that targeted Israeli civilians, killing 1,200 and taking 251 as hostages.
At the bottom of the flyer was a promotion: “Free massage for UESF members.”
“It was so despicable,” Miller, 47, told J. in an interview Wednesday.
When Miller contacted UESF leadership, believing the flyer was sent in error, he reached union vice president Frank Lara, who stood by it, Miller said.
Shocked and infuriated, Miller demanded the return of his union dues.
Miller shared with J. an email exchange that followed between him and Lara. “I said, ‘You were advertised as a teachers union … not a terrorist organization. I don’t want my money going to support this,’” Miller said. But Lara informed him that the $3,000 he’d paid the union since joining roughly two years prior, in September 2022, would not be returned.
“And I said, ‘See you in court,’” Miller said.
Miller meant it. In November 2024, he sued Lara and the UESF in small claims court.
Miller sued for half of what he had paid, roughly $1,500, he said, because he was skeptical he would prevail and didn’t expect to recoup the full amount. Miller told the judge in his claim that the union should return his money because it was financing hate. “I won’t have my money used to support terror or hate groups,” he wrote.
Miller thought the lawsuit would prove mostly symbolic. He was wrong. In May, a judge awarded him $7,700, including emotional distress damages, according to Miller and an attorney who now represents him. It was five times the amount Miller had sued for.
But that victory is likely fleeting, Miller told J.
The UESF has filed to appeal the decision. On Aug. 20, Miller is set to testify at an appeal hearing in San Francisco Superior Court. Miller will be represented by a pro bono attorney through the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, a Jewish civil rights firm that’s gained a national reputation for combating both antisemitism and anti-Zionism on college campuses.
“We said, ‘They’re lawyering up. You shouldn’t be going in there all by yourself,’” Rachel Lerman, vice chair of the Brandeis Center, told J.
A pro-bono labor and employment attorney from law firm Duane Morris will represent Miller in court, she said.
Lerman, who is based in the center’s L.A. office, noted that appealing a small claims decision is “rather unusual.”
“I’ve been an appellate lawyer for many, many years,” she said. “I’ve never seen an appeal from a small claims court decision.” Lerman is also the director of appeals and critical motions at the Brandeis Center.
Neither Lara nor UESF responded to requests for comment.
Lerman explained that the trial is “de novo,” essentially, starting from scratch, meaning that Miller will have to make his case to a new judge, from the beginning.
Miller is still willing to settle or even drop the case if the union would apologize for sending the flyer, he said. Miller said he’s made the offer to the union and Lara multiple times.
“I said we can settle this. All you have to do is send out an email to all the teachers, apologizing for that poster and promising not to do it again, and I will drop this case,” Miller said. “And of course, they didn’t.”
Miller is one of a number of San Francisco Unified School District teachers who have grown frustrated with the union’s anti-Israel activism, which has intensified since Oct. 7, 2023. Several Jewish members — more than a dozen, one Lowell High School math teacher told J. this spring — have left the union since the war began.
Marinell Jochnowitz, a speech therapist at Alvarado Elementary, left UESF in November 2023, after the union passed a Gaza cease-fire resolution that did not mention the Oct. 7 attack or the hostages. Instead, it called for an “end to U.S. aid to Israel.”
Since she left the union, she said, UESF’s anti-Israel actions have only gotten worse.
“The business of an educators union is to advocate for fair wages and good working conditions for their members,” Jochnowitz told J. on Tuesday. For example, she said, UESF’s Instagram page shows Lara and other UESF leaders rallying for Palestinians and wearing kaffiyehs while representing the union. It is the mixing of personal politics and official union activity that upsets her. “If the leadership wants to engage in political activity as private citizens, that’s their right,” she said.
Amy Brownstein Lum, a teacher at George Peabody Elementary, said she believes that she is one of the few Jewish educators still left in the teachers union. She said most Jewish teachers she knows have left.
“I’ve been disappointed with their focus and their obsession, in my opinion, with Israel,” Brownstein Lum told J. on Tuesday, adding that she has been “tempted to leave over and over again.”
She has stayed to advocate against antisemitic and anti-Israel resolutions within the union, she said, but has often been outnumbered. During the past school year, she voted against a resolution calling for the establishment of a “Palestine Solidarity Committee,” which was later renamed the “anti-war committee” and was intensely focused on anti-Israel activism. The measure passed.
“I feel like I need to stay to have a voice, to have a vote,” she said.
For his part, Miller is heading back to the classroom the same week as the trial. He specializes in teaching students with autism, helping them integrate into the school’s mainstream classes.
He said the ongoing legal fight has not dimmed his enthusiasm for his work.
“It’s incredibly hard,” he said of his job. “But I love it so much.”