The Temecula Valley school board is being sued over a critical race theory ban approved in December at the first meeting of its conservative Christian majority.
The legal action was announced Wednesday morning, Aug. 2, at a Los Angeles news conference. Those suing include Temecula’s teachers union.
Mark Rosenbaum, director of Public Counsel’s Opportunity Under Law project, called the filing “the first ever civil rights action in California challenging the imposition of curriculum censorship of what students can learn about American history, about racial and gender subject matters, and about their racial and gender identities.”
Amanda Mangaser Savage, supervising senior staff attorney for Public Counsel, said the group will pursue a court order “seeking to strike down this resolution as unconstitutional.”
“It is vague, it is discriminatory, it is unlawful and it contravenes every single freedom at the heart of American democracy,” said Savage, who added that the plaintiffs would “welcome the state” to participate in the case.
The complaint was filed Wednesday in Riverside County Superior Court, according to Public Counsel.
The complaint alleges that the board’s resolution “prohibits the teaching of a sweeping and ill-defined range of content referred to as ‘Critical Race Theory or other similar frameworks.’ The vague Resolution hinders Temecula educators’ ability to teach State-mandated content standards, prepare for the coming academic year, and support rather than stifle student inquiry.”
The court filing names all five board members as defendants as well as the district.
Joseph Komrosky, who proposed the ban and was chosen as board president at that first meeting after the November election, said in a Wednesday statement that he and the board will respond to the suit “in due course” and through the legal system.
“I will simply note for now that, in my view, this suit effectively represents an effort by those behind it to secure the ability to use CRT and its precepts of division and hate as an instructional framework in our schools,” wrote Komrosky, a philosophy professor at Mt. San Antonio College in Walnut.
Temecula Valley Unified School District spokesperson James Evans could not be reached Wednesday. In the past, Temecula Valley administrators and former board members have said the district does not teach critical race theory and never has.
Many educators say critical race theory is a law school and graduate-level course of study, but conservatives use the term in reference to K-12 lessons on slavery and U.S. race relations that they say are divisive and place blame on White residents for past policies and practices.
The resolution in question passed Dec. 13 on a 3-2 vote. Board members Komrosky, Danny Gonzalez and Jen Wiersma — the conservative Christian majority elected in November — voted in favor. Board members Allison Barclay and Steven Schwartz, who have often opposed initiatives of the board majority, voted no.
Schwartz said in December that he would ask the board to rescind the critical race theory resolution, citing concern about adverse legal and educational effects.
On Wednesday, Schwartz said of the ban, “we shouldn’t have done it, because, you know, having been a teacher for so many years, when you tell students that you don’t want them to study something, that’s the first thing they want to go study.”
The Temecula school board’s resolution says in part that “Critical Race Theory violates the fundamental principle of equal protection under the law.”
It also states that social science courses may include Critical Race Theory, provided that the instruction “plays only a subordinate role in the overall course” and “focuses on the flaws in Critical Race Theory.”
The board’s ban inspired protests from district students. In December, about 200 Temecula Valley High School and 350 students from Great Oak High School participated in walkouts. And in January, students from those schools were joined by Chaparral High School students in another walkout.
Temecula Valley Unified School District teachers and parents also spoke at Wednesday’s news conference, detailing their concerns and experiences they’ve had since the resolution passed.
Edgar Diaz, president of the Temecula Valley Educators Association, discussed the uncertainty the ban created for educators and students and the union’s decision to join the litigation.
“The fear to comply is real,” Diaz said. “Educators are identified on social media outlets, and targeted through their social profiles and classroom voicemails with horrible accusations that go against the very nature of their service to the students of Temecula.”
Dawn Sibby, a Temecula Valley High School teacher, said the ban has caused fear and put teachers into a hostile work environment. New teachers aren’t going to want to work for the district, she said.
Sibby shared an anecdote about a teacher calling her during a break.
“She was crying because she was being asked to come to the principal’s office because of posters she had in her classroom,” she said.
Sibby said the posters were of civil rights leaders, including slain LGBTQ+ leader Harvey Milk, whose inclusion in a curriculum was cited by some Temecula board members as a reason for rejecting it.
The teacher, who was a probationary employee who could be let go without cause, feared her job was on the line, Sibby said.
“We can’t teach the truth,” Sibby said. “We can’t have posters of true leaders who have positively affected our country and helped us to move forward in this country.”
Another Temecula teacher, Jennifer Scharf, mentioned “outside agitators” participating in board meetings, and cited an interaction she had with a student during the board meeting at which the critical race theory resolution was passed. The student was crying because a supporter of the board majority told her that a Black woman in the audience “should be lynched,” Scharf said.
Scharf said she and several students have been doxxed online.
After banning critical race theory, the Temecula school board received more national attention in May, when the majority blocked a social studies curriculum over concerns including that fourth grade supplemental materials mention Milk.
That decision sparked an investigation from the state Department of Education and the threat of a fine from Gov. Gavin Newsom.
At a May meeting, Komrosky asked “Why even mention a pedophile?” in reference to Milk, a San Francisco supervisor who was assassinated in 1978.
On Twitter, Newsom, a liberal Democrat and a former San Francisco mayor, called Komrosky’s comment “an ignorant statement from an ignorant person” on Twitter. Komrosky later said he wasn’t referring to Milk’s sexuality, but to Milk’s intimate relationship at age 33 with a 16-year-old boy. A Milk biography chronicled the relationship but gay rights activists have said suggestions that Milk was a pedophile are defamatory.
On Friday, July 21, the board ended up adopting the curriculum, but placed one chapter of the fourth-grade curriculum under review.
Schwartz said Public Counsel sent a June 20 letter warning “that if we didn’t approve the textbooks and rescind the ban, there would be action.”
“I’m not surprised that they followed through,” he said.
The news conference was at the Public Counsel office in Los Angeles and was attended by members of Public Counsel, the Ballard Spahr law firm, the Temecula Valley Educators Association and district teachers and parents. Temecula students, parents, and educators are represented by Public Counsel and Ballard Spahr LLP, with support from the California Teachers Association, a news release states.