Bill Summaries: What We're Opposing and Why

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Bill Summaries: What We're Opposing and Why

CALL TO ACTION: Contact your CA state reps to oppose four bills to oppose conflating Zionism with Judaism, and to prioritize fighting real antisemitism instead of weaponizing accusations of antisemitism to protect Israel.

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Overview 

Jewish Voice for Peace is a Jewish-led organization that works with a broad coalition of allies for Palestinian liberation and to support Judaism beyond Zionism. We are advocating against, and encouraging amendments to, our target bills (SB 998, AB 2615, AB 2664, and SB 1387). We are countering the CA Legislative Jewish Caucus's (LJC) attempts to conflate American Jews with the nation state of Israel.


We stand firm in saying that solidarity with Palestinians is NOT antisemitism, and that continuing to conflate the two actually makes Jewish people less safe. LJC, in partnership with Jewish California (formerly JPAC), has ramped up efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian speech and education on Palestine. In trying to keep Palestine out of California schools and remove it from public discourse generally, LJC has trampled on the democratic process by pushing through bills without enough time for committee or public review, and has refused to work with us and other stakeholder groups. It has weaponized false accusations of antisemitism against fellow legislators, teachers, and even other Jews. We find this behavior undemocratic, un Jewish, and unacceptable.


LJC's unwavering support of Israel is not representative of Jewish Californians. Polling from the Washington Post shows that a significant portion of American Jews are highly critical of Israel's actions: about 61% state that Israel has committed war crimes, and roughly 4 in 10 describe the country as guilty of genocide against Palestinians. Even Senator Scott Wiener has admitted that Israel is committing genocide, but the LJC has continued to advance legislation that infringes on our First Amendment rights to protest and educate about Israel's crimes against humanity.

Background

  • In 2024 Sen. Scott Wiener verbally attacked a student testifying at a legislative hearing for wearing a shirt with pro-Palestinian messaging & falsely accused the student association of being antisemitic. 

  • In 2024 Assembly Member Rebecca Bauer-Kahan attempted to cut a JVP speaker’s testimony about their positive experience at a pro-Palestinian student encampment.

  • More recently, in an Assembly Judiciary Committee hearing, Bauer Kahan launched personal attacks against fellow legislators, saying they were antisemitic for not attending the hearing, and that anyone who voted against AB 2664 was antisemitic.

  • In 2025 AB 715 was pushed through committees & granted extensions without adequate time for committee members or the public to review & provide comments, as was AB 2615 this year. AB 715 authors Rick Zbur & Dawn Addis promised multiple legislators that they would provide cleanup language on AB 715, but refused to work with JVP, CAIR, & other coalition allies to address our concerns. They then lied in the Assembly Education Committee about the cleanup commitments they made to the Senate Education Committee last year.

In our advocacy efforts to protect human rights, alongside coalition partners including the ACLU, CTA, CFA, and SEIU, our members and allies have been personally attacked and accused of being antisemitic by various members of the LJC. This behavior is unbecoming of members of the California Legislature and undemocratic toward their constituents. We have tried to work in good faith with the AB 715/2615 authors, and have offered to bring CAIR, union, and ACLU representatives into those conversations, to no avail.


These are just a few recent examples of how LJC has undercut democratic norms in California. Its agenda closely mirrors what Trump has done at the federal level: forcing colleges and universities to adopt the IHRA redefinition of antisemitism, and limiting First Amendment rights in student codes of conduct. We care deeply about antisemitism, but believe the LJC's strategy for combating it is dangerously aligning California with Trump's Project Esther. In May 2025, the New York Times described Project Esther's goal as branding a broad range of critics of Israel as effectively a terrorist support network, so that they could be deported, defunded, sued, fired, expelled, ostracized, and otherwise excluded from what it considered open society. The report highlighted attempts to remove curriculum viewed as pro Palestinian from schools and universities, remove supporting faculty, purge social media of alleged antisemitic content, rescind public funding, and revoke visas for and deport those who engaged in pro Palestinian advocacy.

LJC and Jewish California are increasingly out of touch with Jewish Californians in their unwavering support for Israel, despite the ongoing genocide in Gaza (as concluded by the UN, all major human rights organizations, and genocide scholars). The LJC would have these facts buried, but we know that Jewish Californians have diverse and complex opinions on Israel. There is NOT the monolithic support for Israel they are attempting to enshrine in law. In their attempts, they are also aligning California with Trump's policies, making it easier for him to weaponize false accusations of antisemitism against educators, students, and immigrants over their protected pro Palestinian speech.


These bills are not isolated; they are part of a larger strategy. As Jews and allies for Palestinian liberation, we cannot allow this to continue. This strategy is short sighted and places Jews at greater risk by allying the Jewish community with fascists and white Christian nationalists. We advocate for a view of Judaism and policy grounded in solidarity with all oppressed peoples. Ethnonationalist states in all forms are dangerous.

Oppose Unless Amended: AB 2615 (Addis, Zbur)

AB 715 was passed in 2025, ostensibly to address antisemitism in TK–12 education and create an appointed “antisemitism prevention coordinator.” During the legislative process, a broad coalition of teachers, administrators, school board members, students, labor unions, and civil rights organizations raised significant concerns about the bill’s actual intent. The authors presented AB 2615 as this cleanup bill, but it does not address our concerns. 


AB 2615 has been sent back to the Assembly Rules Committee BUT could still be renewed through a ‘gut & amend’ strategy using a different Senate bill or by the Rules Committee granting a waiver for an extension, which they have in the past, so we still want to discuss it today along with the major issues that still need to be corrected from AB 715, either with this bill or another. 

Core problems that remain:

  • It doesn't remove the ban on "advocacy" from AB 715, and arguably broadens it. AB 2615 narrows the prohibition to "issue advocacy" while adding "opinion on controversial issues," which broadens the scope. This language could be used to target teaching about Israel's treatment of Palestinians, ethnic studies, and other curricula addressing systemic racism or colonialism, leaving teachers vulnerable to complaints for honest, accurate instruction. This language needs to be removed.

  • It keeps AB 715's reliance on the IHRA redefinition of antisemitism. In Education Code section 33803.1(c), AB 715 references the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism, which identifies the widely disputed IHRA definition of antisemitism as its most prominent reference. Dr. Kenneth Stern, author of a precursor to the IHRA definition, has warned that “enshrining such a definition into law would have dangerous consequences, exposing schools to civil-rights investigations simply for allowing lectures, protests, or programs that cast Israel in a negative light.”  

This same definition is already used by the Trump administration to subpoena UC and CSU leaders over pro Palestinian events and protests, and to justify detaining people for protected political activity. Enshrining it in California education code sets a dangerous precedent for other states.

  • The Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator remains a political appointment rather than a civil service position. This must change to a merit based hiring process to prevent the position from being filled by Israel and/or Trump aligned loyalists rather than qualified, non partisan professionals.

  • The instructional materials removal language narrows the target rather than fixing the problem. AB 715 already mandates that instructional materials found to violate the law be immediately and permanently omitted from all course materials. AB 2615 shifts this to require removal of "all violating portions" of instructional materials, giving complainants a precise tool to surgically target and remove specific teaching about Palestine and Israel, with the Superintendent of Public Instruction required to ensure compliance. This oversight role is far outside the SPI's normal scope, and the authors have not clarified how it would actually be carried out.

Assembly Member Garcia drafted genuine cleanup language, AB 2159, in partnership with SEIU California, the California Faculty Association, CAIR California, the California Labor Federation, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center Action (AROC Action), and Jewish Voice for Peace. AB 2159 was not allowed to be introduced to the Rules Committee by Speaker Rivas. It would have resolved the urgent concerns raised by the education community and referenced in Governor Newsom's AB 715 signing message, by removing the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism as the basis for identifying antisemitism, requiring the coordinator to be hired through a merit based civil service process, and removing vague and subjective terms as a basis for discrimination complaints.

Antisemitism is a real issue in California schools, but AB 2615 is not the way to address it. JVP urges a NO vote on AB 2615 unless it is significantly amended.

Oppose Unless Amended: SB 998 (Gonzalez)

  • SB 998 defines the roles of anti-discrimination coordinators and requires that they receive appropriate training. We support this goal and appreciate the clarification of roles and training requirements the bill provides.

  • Our core concern is that these coordinator positions remain gubernatorial appointments rather than merit based civil service positions. This risks anti-discrimination cases becoming politicized or weaponized against teachers, which we are already seeing in Berkeley, Oakland, and LA school districts. Education, and anti-discrimination policy especially, is already highly politicized; leaving these as political appointments only increases that risk. If a MAGA aligned governor were elected, these positions could be filled with loyalists who choose not to carry out investigations in good faith.

  • Anti-discrimination coordinators of all kinds should be trained professionals, hired through a civil service process that ensures non-partisan, qualified individuals are working with students, teachers, and families. We want to be clear that this is a request for a uniform standard: JVP believes ALL anti-discrimination coordinators, including those in both SB 998 and AB 2615, should be civil service positions, not political appointments.

JVP urges amendment of SB 998 to require a civil service hiring process, to prevent further politicization and ensure all students are equally protected.

Oppose AB 2664

  • AB 2664 would impose unconstitutional penalties for peaceful protest outside houses of worship. Recent increases in antisemitic violence, like all forms of religiously motivated violence, must be unequivocally condemned. However, curtailing constitutionally protected speech is not the answer.

Key concerns:

  • The bill would impose harsh penalties, including jail time, for peaceful protest within a 100 foot radius of an entrance or exit of a place of religious worship, punishable by a fine of up to $1,000, imprisonment in county jail for up to 6 months, or both.

  • Prosecution of protesters under this bill would be unconstitutional under the First Amendment. It would criminalize ordinary protected activity, including leafleting, sign holding, and political demonstrations.

  • The bill is motivated by peaceful protests outside synagogues opposing land sales to Jews only in the illegally occupied West Bank, transactions that violate international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention's prohibition on an occupying power transferring its civilian population into occupied territory.

  • Existing law already protects against violence and harassment, and provides special protections for sensitive locations such as religious institutions.

  • Proponents have argued that a vote against the bill is antisemitic. This is an ad hominem argument meant to distract from the bill's unconstitutionality, and it conflicts with a foundational Jewish value: the embrace of open and vigorous debate.

  • The bill would have unforeseen effects. For example, it would also limit and criminalize protests outside a house of worship that excluded people by race or hosted a hate group speaker, and could criminalize a neighbor's yard sign or window display, as has occurred near the Westboro Baptist Church.

The bill is opposed by the ACLU as well as Jewish Voice for Peace. JVP urges a NO vote on AB 2664.

Oppose SB 1387 (Stern)

SB 1387 would create a single "Jewish ethnicity" checkbox on state demographic forms, an oversimplification of identity that could exacerbate antisemitism and cause other unintended harms.

Key concerns

  • In the United States, Judaism is generally considered a religion. While many self-identified Jews are not religiously observant and consider themselves more culturally and or ethnically Jewish, that can be true of Christians, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and more. But among them, this bill singles out only Jews as having an option to identify as an ethnicity.

  • “Ethnicity” is generally regarded as something inherited, not chosen. A non-Jew who comes to identify as Jewish, whether through formal religious conversion or familial ties, does not alter their ethnicity.

  • Moreover, most other identity groups recognized as “ethnicities” (or sometimes “races”) in the growing lists found on state demographic questionnaires are seen as such due to their origin in a particular place, e.g. East Asia, Europe, Africa, Spain/Latin America, etc., with numerous subgroups listed in some instances but not others. The most recent statute enacted, AB 91, lists 32 (!) national and transnational groups included in the new “Middle Eastern or North African” category – all of them geographically based.

  • U.S. Jewish communities, by contrast, stem from multiple lands of origin scattered throughout the world. A majority of U.S. Jews are of Ashkenazi origin, but even that includes people from parts of central and eastern Europe that are quite distinct culturally. And there are U.S. Jews of Sephardi (Spanish), Mizrahi (Arab), North African, Western European, Persian, Ethiopian, Indian, Chinese origin and more. While they share a religious heritage, they have more in common ethnically with non-Jews in their places of origin. So the single “Jewish ethnicity” box that would be offered (optionally, to boot) on state forms would not add significant information about our identities. 

  • The analysis by the Assembly Judiciary consultant underlines this point. On the contrary: “If the purpose is, as the author claims, to provide more accurate data, the bill standing on its own may not accomplish this, for the simple reason that a Jewish person who checks that they are racially or ethnically “white” (as 92% of U.S. Jews do now) instead of checking the ‘Jewish’ box will not be recorded as Jewish.” That this could better identify instances of antisemitism and counter the phenomenon, as the author claims, makes no sense.

  • Various reputable, respected NGOs have studied U.S. Jewish identity and drawn much more extensive, meaningful conclusions than a single flawed check box could possibly provide. Their findings are available to anyone who seriously wants to craft policy.

  • Another analysis of SB 1387, prepared for Senate Appropriations, estimates that “while resource requirements will vary by agency, if even a few state entities share similar IT needs as EDD, DHCS, and HCAI, then the bill’s aggregate fiscal impact will reach into the millions to tens of millions of dollars.” Especially at a time of budget shortfalls and slashed human services, adoption of this bill would be a colossal waste of scarce resources. 

Given the lack of evidence that this bill is needed, and its potential to cause harm, JVP urges a NO vote on SB 1387.