A controversial California bill designed to create content standards for mandatory high school ethnic studies courses and prevent antisemitism in classrooms was pulled by its authors Wednesday.

The move marks the second time an attempt to restrict what can be taught in ethnic studies courses has failed to gain traction, despite support from more than two dozen Democrats in the state Assembly and Senate.

Ethnic studies has been a contentious topic in California classrooms for several years, but tensions have skyrocketed amid the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and sparked student protests, district lawsuits and community rifts.

A state mandate passed in 2021 requires public high schools to offer a course in ethnic studies by the 2025-26 school year. By 2030, students won’t be able to graduate without it.

But California teachers and school districts are mostly free to design their own courses, with a hard-fought state model curriculum established in 2021 as the only set of guidelines for educators. Several Bay Area schools have been caught in the crossfire amid claims their course content is antisemitic, igniting lawsuits, campaigns to recall school board members and retaliation against teachers.

AB 1468, introduced by Democratic Assemblymembers Rick Chavez Zbur of Los Angeles and Dawn Addis of San Luis Obispo, would have required the state Board of Education to adopt content standards for ethnic studies by January 2028, restrict course topics to “domestic” experiences and conflicts and require the state Board of Education to monitor and post online the course materials being taught in classrooms throughout the state.

Zbur and Addis had introduced a similar bill last year, but it faced heavy opposition from the California Teachers’ Association and the California Faculty Association and was pulled by the authors.

This week, Zbur and Addis pulled AB 1468 and introduced a new bill aimed at targeting antisemitism in California schools – AB 715. The bill is a joint effort between the chairs of California legislative diversity caucuses, including the Black, Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander and Jewish caucuses.

AB 715 would broaden existing anti-discrimination protections to include antisemitism and Islamophobia. The bill would also strengthen and reform the California Department of Education’s complaint process regarding discrimination and establish a state antisemitism coordinator.

Zbur – a member of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus – said the decision to pull AB 1468 stemmed from collaboration between the diversity caucuses in creating AB 715 and an interest in focusing on expanding anti-discrimination protections for all students, especially Jewish students.

“We all arrived at a decision that the better way of handling this was to basically do something that is broader and applies broadly in schools,” Zbur said.

Zbur said AB 715 would apply to all California school curriculum, not just ethnic studies, as well as discrimination outside of the classroom.

“We are focused on all the ways in which Jewish students are being subjected to discrimination, ostracism and isolation in schools,” Zbur said.

Tyler Gregory, the CEO of the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area, praised the bill’s broader focus on discrimination and the creation of a state antisemitism coordinator.

“Antisemitism is increasing in K-12 classrooms in California,” Gregory said in a statement Thursday. “We need a strategy that goes beyond just problems in some ethnic studies coursework.”

In California, anti-Jewish bias events increased 24.3% from 152 in 2021 to 189 in 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s audit of antisemitic incidents.

But opponents of AB 715 – including the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Arab Resource and Organizing Center Action and Jewish Voice for Peace Action  – have said the bill represents an “assault on academic freedom” and serves as an attempt to “silence voices advocating for Palestinian rights.”

“This bill cloaks censorship in the language of combating antisemitism when, in reality, it is an attempt to erase Palestinian narratives and weaponize identity to chill protected speech,” said Hussam Ayloush, CEO of the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in a statement. “Our classrooms should be places of truth, not tools of repression.”

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Theresa Montaña, a professor of ethnic studies at California State University Northridge and the chair of the California Faculty Association Teacher Education Caucus, criticized AB 715 for singling out antisemitism above all other forms of discrimination.

“AB 715 risks turning every classroom disagreement into a political minefield, and every educator into a target,” Montaña said in a statement Wednesday.

The bill comes as the Trump administration has targeted antisemitism at schools and universities across the country.

The administration has opened investigations into 60 universities over allegations of antisemitic discrimination and harassment, including at California State University at Sacramento, Stanford University, UC Davis, UC San Diego and UC Berkeley. The University of California also faces a U.S. Justice Department investigation over claims the system allowed an “antisemitic hostile work environment.” And a federal task force charged with combating antisemitism is set to visit UC Berkeley to investigate allegations the university failed to protect Jewish students and faculty from harassment and discrimination.

“Extremists and hate groups have made similar accusations for years claiming Jewish exceptionalism or even Jewish supremacy. And those notions really are very problematic,” Zbur said. “This is a bill about addressing a significant rise in antisemitism in the classroom. And actually having a bill that focuses on that is not only important, but is something that I think we as legislators are required to respond to.”