Lawsuit Targeting LA Teachers Union Aims to Make CA an Open Shop State

Under the guise of fighting alleged “anti-semitism”, the anti-labor Freedom Foundation has filed a lawsuit seeking to undo California’s “exclusive representation” provisions as they apply to the Los Angeles Unified School District. FF’s lawsuit asserts that these provisions are unconstitutional because they compel the litigants–five Jewish LAUSD teachers–to accept the allegedly anti-semitic union, United Teachers Los Angeles, as their sole bargaining agent.

The lawsuit was filed against LAUSD Superintendent Alberto Carvalho as well as the members of the California Public Employees Relations Board. UTLA was later added as a defendant.

Eliminating UTLA’s exclusive representation for LAUSD teachers and dividing the LAUSD educator bargaining unit among multiple bargaining representatives would dramatically weaken all LAUSD teachers’ bargaining position and lead to a deterioration of our working conditions, pay, and benefits. If successful, the FF will deploy this tactic against other LAUSD unions and public employee unions in other cities, with the eventual goal of making California an open shop state.

The complaint opens with its de facto thesis statement–“UTLA supports calls for the destruction of Plaintiffs’ religious homeland, and promotes animosity and violence towards people of Jewish descent”–but doesn’t come close to substantiating any of this. Again and again the allegations in FF’s complaint boil down to the fact that most of the litigants’ UTLA colleagues simply don’t agree with the litigants’ views on the war in Gaza. That’s not anti-semitism.

While obviously I can only analyze here a small portion of the allegations brought up in an 8,000 word legal complaint, below I examine FF’s central allegations.

Accusation #1: UTLA Knowingly Backed Anti-Semitic LAUSD Board Candidate Khallid Al-Alim 

In its legal complaint, FF’s description of the events surrounding UTLA’s endorsement of Khallid Al-Alim for LAUSD Board Area 1 for the March 5 primary election is so misleading it should cause thinking people to question every description and characterization in the entire document. FF writes:

“In November 2023, the UTLA Political Action Council of Educators, with the encouragement of UTLA’s president Cecily Myart-Cruz, endorsed Khallid Al-Alim as candidate for LAUSD Board Area 1. Mr. Al-Alim has an extensive number of public anti-Semitic posts on both Twitter/X and Instagram, including blood-libel, conspiracy theories, and anti-Zionist rhetoric. When a Jewish UTLA member publicized the nature of Mr. Al-Alim’s posts…[the] UTLA Executive Board removed all evidence of the endorsement from its website a few hours before the election. However, this did not stop UTLA from donating $728,887.44 to Mr. Al-Alim’s campaign.”

In FF’s retelling, UTLA gave Al-Alim’s campaign a large donation even though they knew of Al-Alim’s antisemitism. In reality, UTLA gave the donation when they had no idea about his anti-semitic posts, then withdrew the endorsement right after learning about the posts.

On February 23, the Los Angeles Times reported that UTLA “has suspended its campaign on behalf of school board candidate Kahllid Al-Alim” over posts that “expressed antisemitism…union rules require a formal multi-step process that will be expedited but will take days, brushing up against the March 5 primary.”

On March 4 UTLA announced that it had “rescinded our endorsement of District 1 school board candidate Kahllid Al-Alim after a democratic process that involved UTLA’s endorsement team, the Political Action Council of Educators, Board of Directors, and House of Representatives. UTLA member leaders moved decisively as information came to light.”

UTLA’s endorsement of Al-Alim’s campaign was an embarrassing error, as well as a squandering of nearly three quarters of a million dollars of union dues money. However, it was not anti-semitic–in fact, UTLA’s actions were the exact opposite of anti-semitism.

Accusation #2: UTLA & the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum

In its legal complaint, FF writes “UTLA is an active proponent of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum”, which FF labels an “anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist curriculum.”

Pro-Israel critics of Ethnic Studies often complain that the program gives too much attention to Palestinian and Arab perspectives. What this ignores, however, is that key events in Jewish and Israeli history, particularly the Holocaust, are covered extensively in both World History and US History Classes. The inclusion of Palestinian perspectives is merely an attempt to balance the scales.

Moreover, UTLA has good reasons to promote ethnic studies–LAUSD is three-quarters Latino. As a LAUSD social studies teacher, I’ve been repeatedly disappointed within how little Latino students often know little about their own history and culture.

The FF’s evidence that the LESMC is anti-semitic is that…”the Consortium (which) produces LESMC teaching materials…stated on its website that ‘Zionism is a nationalist, colonial ideology…” and that in an April 2021 ethnic studies panel training hosted by UTLA,  a presenter called Zionism a ‘settler-colonial ideology that justifies the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from their ancestral homeland’.”

Whether one agrees or not, accusations of Israeli “ethnic cleansing” are hardly radical and nothing new–Israel has been accused of “ethnic cleansing” by both Amnesty Internationaland the United Nations and numerous authorities, including Israeli historian Israeli historian Ilan Pappé, Israeli lawmaker Ofer Cassif, Israeli journalist and author Gideon Levy, and others.

Israel’s defenders often vituperate against the “settler colony” label but, as British-Palestinian author Isabella Hammad and Palestinian historian Sahar Huneidi recently noted, for decades Zionists themselves used the word “colonization” to refer to their attempts to create a Jewish state in Palestine.

The King–Crane Commission, an American-led commission of inquiry regarding what should be done with the territories of the defeated Ottoman Empire, found in August of 1919 that the total population of Palestine was 647,500—515,000 Muslims and 192,500 others, roughly equally consisting of Christians, Jews, and Druses.

The Commission was initially sympathetic to Zionist colonization but concluded that the “claim, often submitted by Zionist representatives, that they have a ‘right’ to Palestine, based on an occupation of 2,000 years ago, can hardly be seriously considered…No British officer, consulted by the Commissioners, believed that the Zionist program could be carried out except by force of arms. The officers generally thought that a force of not less than 50,000 soldiers would be required even to initiate the program. That of itself is evidence of a strong sense of the injustice of the Zionist program…”

To be fair, unlike other major settler colonies, including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, many Israelis were refugees as well as settlers.

Accusation #3: Boycott, Divest & Sanction

According to the FF complaint, “UTLA members have held chapter-level discussions which encourage support for the anti-semitic and anti-Israel ‘boycott, divest and sanction’ movement among rank-and-file members of UTLA, who are Plaintiffs’ colleagues, as well as UTLA officials.”

I’ve been a chapter leader for almost seven years and not once have UTLA leaders ever mandated chapter-level discussions about BDS or anything else related to Israel. Chapter leaders are democratically elected–if someone at a school is unhappy over the chapter-level discussions at their school site, I suggest they challenge them in the chapter leader elections next semester.

Accusation #4: ‘Apartheid in Israel’

The FF cites a few times when UTLA members have referred to Israeli “apartheid”, calling it “incendiary language.” While the degree to which the “apartheid” analogy is apt can certainly be debated, this is hardly a groundless position–the “apartheid” accusation has been made by the Israeli human rights groups B’tselem and Yesh Din, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and numerous others.

Zwelivelile Mandela, grandson of legendary South African apartheid opponent Nelson Mandela, says, “The Palestinians are experiencing a worse form of the apartheid regime, worse than that we have ever experienced as South Africans.”

Accusation #5: UTLA Helps Teachers Plot Anti-Israel Lessons

According to the FF complaint, “In August 2024, UTLA hosted a leadership conference that included topics such as how to insert discussions about being anti-Israel in the classroom without getting fired.” A surreptitious recording from UTLA’s August conference shows four UTLA social studies teachers who, agreeing with Israeli and international human rights groups, the United Nations, and countless others, believe Israel is brutalizing Palestinians in Gaza, and are encouraging interested students to get involved in the movement to stop it.

If Algebra or woodshop teachers were talking extensively about the Gaza war in class, critics would have a better point. But the teachers being criticized are social studies teachers–we are supposed to be teaching about current events, and all sides can agree that the Gaza war is a major current event. What the UTLA teachers at this optional conference workshop are doing in class is actually very much in the tradition of Jewish-American educators–imparting to their students a passion to fight injustice.

Accusation #6: UTLA’s 2 Resolutions on the War in Gaza

FF also criticizes two Gaza-related motions passed by UTLA in 2024.

In March, the UTLA House of Representatives passed a resolution in which we joined labor unions nationwide to call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the siege in Gaza. The resolution also called on Hamas to release the Israeli hostages immediately and to “adhere to standards of international law.”

In October, the HoR passed a resolution supporting Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’ effort to block the sale of over $20 billion in offensive U.S. weapons to Israel. UTLA’s resolution explains that “the arms named have been used in violations of U.S. and international law, indiscriminately killing large numbers of civilians, many of them children” and that “Israel has decimated the education system…destroying every university in Gaza.”

As the Jewish Telegraphic Agency recently explained, “a number of progressive Jewish groups are backing [this] effort.

”These resolutions were introduced by UTLA members and voted on in an open, democratic process in which supporters of Israeli policies fully participated. These educators also have the right to introduce resolutions in support of Israel.

Credibility Problems

Many of the claims in FF’s legal complaint originate with LAUSD high school English teacher Amy Leserman, founder of the Los Angeles-based Educators Caucus for Israel and vice president of the NEA Jewish Affairs Caucus. I have served with Leserman in the UTLA House of Representatives, which is the target of many of the litigants’ accusations. Yet many of the claims made by Leserman as well as by Israeli-American Civic Action Network CEO Dillon Hosier–both of whom are named in the FF legal complaint–are not credible.

In a September press release about the controversial UTLA August workshop, Hosier actually says, “What we are witnessing in this leaked footage is UTLA’s version of Wannsee.” In a September X post about the workshop, Hosier threatens the LAUSD teachers–“Enemies of Israel, pay attention. And I hope you’re not wearing a pager.”

A few weeks after the UTLA HoR passed the ceasefire resolution in March, Leserman’s Educators for Israel posted that UTLA “enthusiastically endorses the extermination of #Jews”.

Re: the HoR approval of the October arms embargo resolution, Leserman says there was “no one present to object”, in part because the vote was held on the “last day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot — a move that prevented observant Jewish members from attending.” However, there were numerous Jews in attendance at that HoR meeting, and Jewish speakers used the exact same amount of time arguing against the motion as was given to those in favor of it. Moreover, HoR meetings are scheduled long in advance, for very good reasons–nobody could have anticipated that this particular vote would occur on that particular day.

The spurious claims of “anti-semitism” in FF’s error-riddled legal complaint amount to nothing. UTLA has won two strikes in the past five years, both times decisively. The allegations are a disguise to hide this lawsuit’s purpose–to weaken what FF correctly sees as America’s most effective and powerful teachers union.

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