By David Bocarsly in Sacramento, California
Assembly Bill 2159 – the bill to gut AB 715, California’s landmark antisemitism law – is officially dead.
The proposed language was never amended into the bill, and it was never referred to a committee, missing Friday’s legislative deadline to advance this session. Yet another effort to undo our hard-earned civil rights has failed, and AB 715 remains the law of California.
Nearly 10,000 calls and emails from our community went to legislators demanding that AB 2159 be stopped and Jewish students be protected. We are grateful for every one of those responses – and for the Legislative Jewish Caucus and legislative leadership who stood with us. Lawmakers heard you, and they responded accordingly.
AB 2159 (Garcia) would have removed the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism as a basis for understanding antisemitism, stripped protections against bias and advocacy in classroom instruction, and demoted the statewide Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator to a civil service role – while leaving every other discrimination coordinator untouched. It applied a different, lesser standard to antisemitism than to every other form of hate.
The bill was introduced without any consultation with AB 715’s authors, the Legislative Jewish Caucus, or the Jewish community, and was backed by the California Faculty Association – the same organization that publicly called on politicians to reject any association with Jewish California.
Attention now turns to Assembly Bill 2615, authored by Assemblymembers Rick Chavez Zbur and Dawn Addis – the same authors as AB 715 – which recently passed the Assembly Education Committee.
AB 2615 is a narrow technical cleanup bill that addresses specific implementation questions raised at the end of last session – questions the authors committed to revisiting, and that the Governor referenced in his signing message on AB 715. It was developed with input from education stakeholders, legislative leaders, the Legislative Jewish Caucus, and the Jewish community. That is the process that should govern any legislation touching our civil rights, and it reflects the kind of good-faith engagement that was so conspicuously absent from AB 2159.
AB 2615 does not weaken AB 715. The key safeguards we fought for will remain in place.
Unsurprisingly, many of the same organizations that opposed AB 715 are now opposing AB 2615 as well. A cleanup bill that does exactly what the authors promised is apparently unacceptable unless it also dismantles the law’s core protections. It is yet another reminder that opposition to our school antisemitism legislation over the past three years was never about technical details – they are simply not interested in protecting Jewish students.
This was not the first attack on AB 715, and it will not be the last. A federal judge already rejected a legal challenge to the law as likely without merit. AB 2159 was next. We will stay vigilant – in the courts, in the Legislature, and wherever our community’s hard-won protections are threatened.
Next week, we welcome nearly 700 Jewish community leaders and allies to Sacramento for Jewish California’s Capitol Summit – our largest ever. We will celebrate wins like AB 715, advance our ambitious 2026 legislative agenda, and make clear that the Jewish community is not only playing defense. We are here to build – to fight for protections for our community and every vulnerable community in California, and to work toward a state that works better for all of its people.
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David Bocarsly is the CEO of Jewish California, which lobbies state government on behalf of the organized Jewish community.