California Assembly Bill 715: New Antisemitism Law for Schools
Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California Assembly Bill 715, the state's new law addressing antisemitism in K-12 public schools, in October 2025, about 11 months ago. Lawmakers passed it by a lopsided margin: 35-0 in the Senate with five abstentions, and 71-0 in the Assembly with nine abstentions, according to JTA.
Ahead of the signing, JTA reported that AB 715 would make California the first state to create a statewide antisemitism prevention coordinator for public schools. News coverage continued to describe it that way after Newsom signed the bill, though nothing reviewed for this article independently verifies that status against the enacted statute.
This article is built from news coverage published around AB 715's drafting and signing in fall 2025. It has not been checked against the chaptered bill text at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, current guidance from the California Department of Education or the new Office of Civil Rights, or confirmation of whether a coordinator has been appointed. Treat any description of what AB 715 "requires" below as reported, not verified statutory language, and confirm the current record before applying anything here to a specific lesson, complaint, or classroom decision. That call belongs to district counsel or the relevant state office.
Lawmakers pointed to rising bias reports as their reason for acting. Reports of anti-Jewish bias statewide roughly doubled between 2021 and 2024, according to the California Department of Justice, CalMatters reported. Religiously motivated hate crimes in the state rose 142% between 2015 and 2024, with Jewish people affected in most of those cases, JTA reported, and in 2024 more than 15% of all hate crime events recorded statewide were anti-Jewish even though Jewish people make up about 3% of California's population, CalMatters found. California doesn't separately track antisemitism incidents inside K-12 schools, so those figures explain lawmakers' rationale rather than conditions in any particular classroom.
What the AB 715 California antisemitism law was designed to do
2025 reporting described AB 715 as establishing a new state Office of Civil Rights within the governor's cabinet, housing an antisemitism prevention coordinator alongside coordinators for other forms of discrimination, according to JTA. Ahead of the signing, KQED reported that the governor would appoint that coordinator, though no source reviewed here confirms whether an appointment has since been made.
JTA described the coordinator's proposed duties as training teachers and administrators, tracking incidents, and advising on accountability measures, not adjudicating individual complaints, according to JTA. Separately, the bill was reported to bar the use of professional-development materials that violate the state's existing anti-discrimination laws, a distinct compliance rule from the classroom instructional standard covered below, CalMatters and LAist reported.
CalMatters reported that the law directs the coordinator to use federal antisemitism guidance issued under the Biden administration "as a basis" for decision-making. That guidance treats one widely adopted, contested definition of antisemitism, first written more than two decades ago by Kenneth Stern, as its most prominent reference, while also noting that other definitions exist, according to LAist.
The bill was the sole legislative priority in 2025 of the 18-member California Legislative Jewish Caucus, led by Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel and Sen. Scott Wiener, according to CalMatters and LAist. It was sponsored by the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California, which built a coalition of 70 Jewish organizations behind it, JTA reported. Supporters said the measure was meant to address harassment, discrimination, and instructional material they viewed as antisemitic in California classrooms, according to JTA.
How the classroom language changed
Jewish lawmakers first tried a narrower approach, tying antisemitism protections to California's ethnic studies model curriculum, adopted in 2021 after years of disputes over antisemitic content, according to LAist. That effort stalled, and legislators shifted to AB 715 in May 2025, expanding the scope to cover the entire K-12 system.
"We cannot hide from the profoundly unfortunate truth that Jewish kids are being isolated, made to feel unwelcome, and verbally and physically attacked. And far too often, our schools are failing to protect them," Assemblymember Rick Zbur, a bill co-author, said at a May 2025 hearing, CalMatters reported.
By July 2025, the bill defined instruction that denied Israel's right to exist, equated Israelis with Nazis, or disrespected Israel's significance to Jewish people as creating an "antisemitic learning environment," CalMatters reported. That language drew opposition from teachers unions, school boards, civil rights advocates, and Muslim community organizations, who raised concerns about censorship and academic freedom.
The final version dropped that Israel-specific language. It no longer references the Israel-Hamas war, CalMatters reported, and LAist similarly reported it no longer mentions the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It still requires instruction to be "factually accurate" and free of "advocacy, personal opinion, bias, or partisanship," the provision the bill's authors said they ran out of time to refine before signing.
Opposition lingered even as the bill narrowed in its final days, CalMatters reported. Mara Harvey, a Jewish schoolteacher and California Teachers Association board member, wrote in August 2025 that an earlier version would bring "right-wing, Trump-style censorship" to California schools, JTA reported. The CTA, which represents more than 300,000 educators, opposed the bill when it was first introduced, warning it could chill classroom discussion of Israel and invite politically motivated complaints, according to JTA.
Wiener pushed back on that framing. "It's a narrower and more focused bill than it was before, but it's still quite impactful and it sets some clear standards, and creates an antisemitism coordinator, so it's a good bill," he told Jewish Insider, JTA reported. He also pointed to his own public criticism of the Israeli government's conduct in Gaza as evidence the bill wasn't meant to shield Israel from debate, JTA reported.
Assemblymember Robert Garcia, a former teacher and school board member, abstained from the final vote, saying the bill reinforced "broader national trends of silencing constitutionally protected speech," according to CalMatters and LAist.
At least half a dozen other state legislatures also took up school antisemitism measures in 2025, with some adopting the Stern-authored definition directly into their education codes, CalMatters reported. Despite California's rising bias reports, the state was ranked the top state for combating antisemitism in fall 2025 in a scorecard from the Anti-Defamation League, which gave it a score of 94, according to KQED.
What districts and families still need to verify
News coverage of AB 715 describes three separate pieces worth keeping apart: the classroom instructional standard, the professional-development materials rule, and the coordinator's training and advisory role, according to CalMatters and JTA. That grouping is a reporting device drawn from coverage of the bill, not a confirmed legal classification stated in the statute itself, so it's worth treating as a starting point for review rather than a settled framework.
Bill sponsors said criticism of the Israeli government isn't the law's target. The supplied reporting does not describe an adjudicated case applying that boundary, so how it plays out in an actual classroom remains an open question. Reporting from around the signing also doesn't say whether the coordinator position has been filled or when the office started operating, which is worth confirming rather than assuming.
District officials reviewing the law will need to confirm the effective date, the exact operative language, and any agency guidance issued since signing before changing local policy. That means pulling the chaptered AB 715 text at leginfo.legislature.ca.gov, checking the California Department of Education and the Office of Civil Rights for coordinator status and issued guidance, and bringing findings to district legal counsel before revising curriculum-review or harassment policy language.
For a specific concern about a lesson, complaint, or classroom incident, teachers and families should contact the district office responsible for curriculum or student nondiscrimination and ask which current policy and complaint procedure applies. That office and process vary by district, and this article isn't determining anyone's legal rights or obligations under the law. Before the next curriculum-review cycle or board meeting, ask district counsel whether and how AB 715's instructional standard has been incorporated into existing policy, rather than relying on 2025 news coverage to answer that question.