By Skylar Laird
Legislation that failed last June, would have nullified the most disputed part of the law
It claims they removed curriculum and books out of fear of violating the clause that legislators first approved as part of the state budget in 2021. Schools that violate the law risk losing state funding.
The law says no state money can go toward the teaching or training of eight banned concepts, which include anyone being responsible for past atrocities because of their race, that someone’s worth is determined by race, and that traits such as hard work are oppressive and racist.
Of the eight, the concept cited as the most troublesome says lessons can’t make anyone “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his race or sex.”
The wording is vague and discriminatory, leaving schools and statewide officials to unnecessarily remove history lessons and books by Black authors from shelves, the lawsuit claims.
Legislators of both parties agreed that line in the law could stifle instruction. That’s why it was purposefully excluded from legislation that sought to clean up the law while creating a uniform complaint process.
But that bill ultimately died last June after negotiations between the House and Senate stalled for a year. Then, on the final day of the special session, Senate Democrats refused to accept the compromise, which needed bipartisan support for the necessary supermajority approval in both chambers. So, it failed on a vote of 25-13, leaving the vague language in place. The House never voted on the final version.
Legislators would have to start over a third time if they want to revive the proposal. (The first version died in 2022.)
The education department remains dedicated to ensuring schools teach “both the tragedies and triumphs” of history, said spokesman Jason Raven.
“This meritless lawsuit does not diminish our dedication, nor does it identify any shortcomings or legal defects,” Raven said in a statement. “The South Carolina Department of Education will continue to seek meaningful opportunities to build bridges across divisions, honor the richness of our shared history, and teach it with integrity, all while ensuring full compliance with state law.”
Education department officials pointed to the law and controversy surrounding it in when it didn’t include African American Studieson the state’s roster of Advanced Placement courses for this school year — the course’s inaugural year following a two-year pilot.
Schools can still offer honors classes on African American history, with the option of taking the end-of-course Advanced Placement test for college credit. Instead of the state paying the $98 fee for the test, though, the cost would fall to the district or student.
It’s unclear why honors African American classes but not the standard Advanced Placement version would be allowed under the law, the lawsuit reads. Two students joined the lawsuit over the AP course.
“This lawsuit simply is to ask the courts to do what’s right to stop the censorship and allow students to hear from their teachers, to learn freely about things like race and gender,” said attorney Tyler Bailey.
School librarians, teachers and administrators have also removed books from classrooms and libraries for fear that they violate the law, the lawsuit claims.
Among those books are “Between the World and Me” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, which was removed from a teacher’s curriculum in the Lexington-Richland 5 School District in 2023, and “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” by Ibram X. Kendi, which has been removed from school libraries across the state, the lawsuit claims.
Kendi, who a GOP legislator repeatedly quoted during a House floor debate last year, is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Those books and others contain valuable insights into Black culture and history, as well as important information for students to learn, attorneys said.
“We see this as an attack on Black people, history and culture,” said Santino Coleman, an attorney for the Legal Defense Fund, which is representing plaintiffs in the lawsuit.
Teachers and administrators may be overly cautious in enforcing the law because it’s so unclear what it covers, the lawsuit claims.
For instance, some teachers believe they can’t talk about events such as the Holocaust because that would cause students discomfort. Others questioned whether they would be able to talk about pay disparities between men and women because of the inclusion of sex discrimination in the law, the lawsuit reads.
Chapin High School librarian Ayanna Mayes, a plaintiff in the case, found herself unsure of what books might be allowed to remain in the school library, she told reporters Monday. School administrators began monitoring her work much more closely after the law went into effect, she said.
“There is no way to deny that our state and school districts have thwarted mine and my colleagues’ efforts to provide the highest quality education to our students without blatantly calling us liars,” Mayes said.
The lawsuit asks a federal judge to stop the enforcement of the state law, claiming it violates constitutional rights to freedom of speech and equal protection, as well as protections against viewpoint discrimination and selective enforcement of the law.
An unfortunate irony?
Beyond striking the most problematic banned concept, the legislation that died last year also specified that “fact-based” instruction on history was not part of the ban.
During the debate, legislators of both parties said they want students to get a full and accurate picture of history, including the ugly and brutal parts.
As passed by the Senate in May 2023, also along party lines, the bill specifically protected “historically accurate” discussions on slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, segregation, racial lynchings, and any “historical oppression of a particular group of people based on race, sex, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, or geographic region.”
The opponents who protested outside the Statehouse and packed hearings said the legislation would create fear among teachers about what they could teach, censor lessons, and discriminate. Some of their testimony centered on language in other bills filed by the uber-conservative House Freedom Caucus, which wasn’t in the versions passed by either chamber.
Opponents wanted the bill struck altogether, rather than amended. They won. But what many perhaps also didn’t realize is that much of the bill they successfully pushed to kill was already state law, which was left in place.
The language inserted into the state budget in 2021 has the same legal authority as state statutes. While the state budget is technically a one-year law, budget clauses generally roll over from one year to the next unless the Legislature specifically votes to take it out or passes a permanent state law that supersedes it — which the killed bill would have done.
If the Legislature tries again, there’s a greater chance Democrats won’t like the bill, since the election newly gave the Senate a GOP supermajority, and any final compromise wouldn’t need Democrats’ support.
The federal courts, however, could weigh in first.
SC Daily Gazette Editor Seanna Adcox contributed to this report.
Phot credit: The COM library
This article originally appeared in South Carolina Daily Gazette on January 28th, 2025
What does the law say?
Since 2021, the state budget has included this clause:
For the current fiscal year, of the funds allocated by the Department of Education to school districts, no monies shall be used by any school district or school to provide instruction in, to teach, instruct, or train any administrator, teacher, staff member, or employee to adopt or believe, or to approve for use, make use of, or carry out standards, curricula, lesson plans, textbooks, instructional materials, or instructional practices that serve to inculcate any of the following concepts:
(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
(2) an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
(3) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his race or sex;
(4) an individual’s moral standing or worth is necessarily determined by his race or sex;
(5) an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
(6) an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his race or sex;
(7) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race; and
*(8) fault, blame, or bias should be assigned to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex.
Nothing contained herein shall be construed as prohibiting any professional development training for teachers related to issues of addressing unconscious bias within the context of teaching certain literary or historical concepts or issues related to the impacts of historical or past discriminatory policies.
*This is the line that was excluded from the bill that failed.
No comments:
Post a Comment