By Marsha Sutton in Carlsbad, California
When the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union with more than 3 million members, is charged with discriminatory practices in violation of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, voters should take notice.
A federal complaint against the NEA was recently filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for creating and perpetuating a hostile environment for Jewish educators, which the center claims has spawned the spread of an anti-Jewish culture throughout K-12 schools.
According to the complaint, the NEA’s discriminatory practices and policies have denied Jewish educators opportunities for leadership, mentorship, governance and training and have contributed to the spread of false narratives and antisemitic stereotypes “throughout the public education system.”
Recent NEA actions and antisemitic incidents at the 2025 NEA Representative Assembly, according to the center, include:
- Jewish delegates were physically surrounded and shouted at by anti-Israel members.
- When a Jewish member referenced the murder of an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor in the Boulder, Colorado attack, other members clapped and laughed.
- Anti-Israel delegates physically intimidated and disrupted the Jewish Affairs Caucus.
- The NEA handbook removed Jews as the primary and uniquely targeted victims of the Holocaust.
- The NEA distributed a map to all members that erased Israel and labeled the entire territory Palestine.
“The NEA’s conduct is both completely illegal and morally unjustifiable,” said Kenneth L. Marcus, chair and CEO of the Brandeis Center and former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Education who ran the Office of Civil Rights during two administrations.
“Unions are supposed to protect their members’ rights. The NEA is actually violating them.”
Marcus said the discrimination is not confined to the union, that it “touches every school and classroom in which an NEA member works.”
According to The 74 Million, delegates also voted to cut ties with the Anti-Defamation League which has provided resources on the Holocaust and antisemitism to public schools for decades. But this decision was later reversed, “following protests from hundreds of Jewish organizations.”
In response, the NEA released the following statement: “NEA has opposed antisemitism throughout its history and is deeply committed to ensuring the safety and inclusion of Jewish educators and students. Without equivocation, NEA stands strongly against antisemitism.”
Commented retired teacher and former NEA Jewish Affairs Caucus chair Patrick Crabtree, in “The 74,” “I’ve heard it said more than once, we’re not the National Everything Association. When we become so political, I think it turns a lot of people off who are more concerned with whether they’re going to keep their jobs.”
In that same article, Jerald Podair, a historian at Wisconsin’s Lawrence University, said, “The politics, for most union members, is a sideshow. What really matters is how much money you make and what your health plan looks like.”
Ideological advocacy
What is happening today in the K-12 environment is predictable, given the history of entrenched anti-Israel focus at the college level.
“With federal agencies now investigating [college] campus climate and state lawmakers weighing oversight measures, the stakes extend far beyond internal campus debates,” wrote Tammi Rossman-Benjamin on April 13, 2026 in JNS (Jewish National Syndicate).
“Tomorrow’s K-12 teachers are trained in these same universities, and when faculty treat politicized advocacy as institutional practice, they train future educators to carry that politicization into their own classrooms.”
We have all seen how that has happened. Unions have taken on causes that go well beyond their mission to support teacher rights. And in turn, teachers indoctrinated with these ideologies pass along to their students advocacy rather than neutrality.
The anti-Israel dogma, which has without doubt filtered into the realm of antisemitism (those who deny this connection have lost all credibility), has become an integral part of teacher training and contaminated real learning with biased personal viewpoints.
Why teachers unions are weighing in on highly charged political and social issues – including supporting abortion and contraception access and LGBTQ+ rights, two causes I also happen to strongly support – is confounding.
When unions become distracted by political no-win issues and stop focusing on their main raison d’etre – protecting teacher rights – credibility is lost.
As if protecting teachers rights isn’t controversial enough.
Teachers before students
Teachers unions are created to benefit teachers, not students. The distinction is critical to understand.
It’s bad enough that unions spend oodles of money endorsing candidates for school board who will become their bosses and oversee their members’ wages and benefits. Not to mention another bundle of money spent to defeat candidates who may have a higher regard for fiscal sensibility and fiduciary frugality.
Entrenched policies and outdated ideas continue to rule the day, while student achievement stagnates and in many cases declines.
As voters contemplate who should be California’s next state superintendent of schools, consider the endorsements
The California Teachers Association is the largest state affiliate of the NEA and has endorsed Richard Barrera for state superintendent of schools for the June election.
Barrera, a San Diego Unified School District board member since 2008, has enjoyed the love of SD Unified’s teachers union ever since.
The CTA “has pumped more than $5 million into the campaign of Richard Barrera over the last six weeks,” according to a May 28 report by EdSource.
In a May 27 report by Voice of San Diego, CTA President David Goldberg said more union funding may be coming. “We are planning to spend as much as it takes for him to win,” he said.
VOSD wrote that the CTA has “acted as a kingmaker” for the last 40 years in the race for state superintendent, a position that doesn’t develop policies but implements them.
If you don’t want unions in control of this important state office, avoid teachers union endorsements – or expect more of the same failed educational policies, resistance to new practices that hold promise, and increases in union member wages and benefits that will continue to outpace student achievement, challenge fiscal responsibility and abuse taxpayer money.
My liberal credentials are solid – check the bumper stickers on my car. But teachers unions are not about chiming in on Mideast politics, nor controversial social issues.
They are also not about representing students.
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Marsha Sutton is an education writer and opinion columnist and can be reached at suttonmarsha@gmail.com.