LOS ANGELES (CN) — An Inland Empire school district's prohibition on the teaching of critical race theory will stand for now, after a Superior Court Judge on Friday declined to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the policy.
A group of parents, teachers and students had sued the Temecula Valley Unified School District and its conservative school board majority in August after the board passed a ban on critical race theory.
The ban passed on a narrow 3-2 vote in December 2022 — the same day the new majority was sworn in. The resolution also included a new rule requiring that parents be notified if their child requests to be treated or identified as having a gender that differs from their gender assigned at birth.
Plaintiff's attorney Mark Rosenbaum called the lawsuit the "first-ever civil rights action, in California, challenging the imposition of curriculum censorship, of what students can learn about American history, about racial and gender subject matters, and about their racial and gender identities."
The resolution bans the teaching of certain concepts, including that “racism is ordinary [and] the usual way society does business" and that “individuals are either a member of the oppressor class or the oppressed class because of race or sex.” School board members say teachers can still teach ethnic studies — and even about critical race theory — but must also discuss its flaws or criticisms of it.
The plaintiffs asked Superior Court Judge Eric Keen to temporarily block the ban, arguing that the resolution is overly broad and has already caused teachers to self-censor and avoid discussing certain topics in the classroom.
In a declaration, one teacher said she felt that she couldn't have her class read and discuss Martin Luther King, Jr.'s famous "Letter from Birmingham Jail," since it discusses how black Americans are oppressed and portrays white Americans as oppressors. Another teacher thought she was unable to have her class read "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry," a book by Mildred Taylor about Jim Crow segregation in rural Mississippi.
Plaintiffs' attorney Amanda Mangaser Savage, of Public Counsel, argued on Friday that the school board members had been unable "to articulate the bounds of the resolution."
The teachers, she said, "do not understand what they are prohibited to teach."
Representing the defendants, lawyer Mariah Gondeiro denied that the resolution prohibited teachers from teaching anything about Martin Luther King, Jr. or slavery. She instead argued that the resolution was aimed at improving school discussion, promoting open-mindedness and "supporting patriotism" — all legitimate pedagogical motives.
In his tentative ruling, later adopted as permanent, Keen wrote that the resolution in question "seeks to limit instruction on the subject of CRT to a subordinate role within a lager instructional framework" — a desire the judge found reasonable.
Perhaps surprisingly, his ruling seemed to weigh in on the substance of critical race theory itself. Keen said the theory that "individuals are either a member of the oppressor class or the oppressed class because of race or sex... would seem to be incongruous with the Legislature's clear intent found in [the] California Education Code."
The judge didn't find the resolution overly vague at all, writing: "A person of ordinary intelligence would have a reasonable opportunity to know what is prohibited as what is prohibited is set out specifically in the Resolution."
"School boards have broad discretion in the management of school affairs," he added, citing case law. "The Board’s conduct does not offend the First Amendment so long as it is 'reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns,'" which he thought was the case here.
As to the parental notification law, Keen thought that was fine too, writing that the policy "applies equally to all students within the district and does not apply disparately to two or more similarly situated groups."
Keen said little throughout the hearing, other than to comment, after making his ruling final, "It's a very interesting topic. I’m fairly certain it’s not going to end here, it's going to move up the system," alluding to a possible appeal.
The ruling was a complete victory for the defendants. Just last week, the same judge rejected two motions by the defendants to dismiss the lawsuit. The case, therefore, remains very much active, and can proceed to discovery and eventually a trial.
An academic theory, critical race theory has been described as a lens or conceptual framework that sees many topics — law, policing, the economy, housing — as being an outgrowth of "systemic racism." As a result, critical race theory posits, those systems are imbued with bias or prejudice.
Critical race theory remains a hot-button political issue, a hobby-horse of right-wing and so-called "anti-woke" commentators. Teaching critical race theory in public schools has been banned in more than a dozen states.
"Unfortunately, Temecula is just one example of school districts and states around the country that are putting culture war politics before the needs of the students and communities," said Yi Li, a fellow at Public Counsel. "Temecula students are now in classrooms where they cannot learn material required by state standards, or have open and honest discussion about current events. And Temecula teachers are at risk of facing sever and arbitrary penalties just by doing their jobs."
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