Parents argue “anti-racist” curriculum is racially hostile

Attorneys for parents of public school students appeared before a panel of the Supreme Court of Virginia last Wednesday to ask for the full court to hear their case challenging Albemarle County School Board’s “anti-racist” curriculum. Plaintiffs contend that the curriculum, implemented in various capacities across all schools in the northern Virginia county, violates free speech rights and creates a race-based hostile environment.

The school board unanimously voted to adopt the program in 2019 and first piloted it at Henley Middle School in 2021. The curriculum teaches students to identify “white privilege” by “expos[ing] whiteness” and to support “anti-racism.”

Additionally, the curriculum explains that students “MUST be anti-racist, instead of simply NOT racist.” A curriculum toolkit instructs teachers that if students are silent about racism, then they are complicit in it. Parents aren’t allowed to opt their children out of the curriculum.

Five families from various racial backgrounds sued the school board in December 2021 because of the program. Parents assert that the curriculum violates their children’s civil rights by treating them differently based on race and compelling them to affirm ideas against their moral, philosophical, and religious beliefs. They also note that the school board impedes parents’ rights under the Virginia Constitution to control the education and upbringing of their children.

The families are asking courts to rule that Albemarle County’s curriculum constitutes racial discrimination. They also want the school district to compensate them for alternative education options for their children.

A lower court dismissed the families’ case in 2022, finding that they lacked standing to bring their claims. The parents then appealed to the Virginia Court of Appeals, only to be dismissed again this past February.

The families are now asking a panel of three judges from the Supreme Court of Virginia to grant their case a hearing in front of the full body of justices.

“The school board compels students to say they agree with its stereotyped viewpoints or risk being branded a racist by their own teachers,” argued Vincent Wagner, senior counsel with the Center for Parental Rights at Alliance Defending Freedom. “[That’s] a label that can stick with a student for years.”

The justices pointed out that school districts have the right to create their own curriculum. Wagner contended that Albemarle’s anti-racism curriculum overrides these rights because it instructs teachers to punish dissenting students. For instance, students can be disciplined if they advocate for a “color-blind society,” Wagner said.

“What makes you think they would label those statements as racist?” Chief Justice S. Bernard Goodwyn asked Wagner. “They didn’t say that. You interpreted what they said to say that.”

Wagner argued that these lessons create a “racially hostile education environment.”

After the hearing, Wagner explained that he aimed to show the injuries the policies have caused, arguing that the families have standing to bring their case. “We don’t have to prove our case at this stage, we are just trying to get you to open the courthouse door,” he said.

The curriculum has directly injured the families, Wagner added.

Plaintiff Melissa Riley worried that the curriculum would make her son, who is from a mixed-racial background, stand out at school. When Riley brought her concerns to her son’s teacher, the teacher communicated that the school planned to create a “‘safe space’ for students of color separate from white students.” To Riley, this idea “sounded like segregation.”

The Supreme Court of Virginia will deliberate over the next few weeks on whether to hear the case or not, Wagner said. If they agree to hear it, the families can make their arguments before all the justices next year.

But if the court declines, the families won’t be able to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court as this case deals solely with protections granted under Virginia’s Constitution, Wagner explained.

Parents aren’t the first to draw attention to the school district’s new curriculum. Emily Mais sued the Albemarle County School Board in 2022, claiming the new lessons created a racially hostile work environment that forced her to leave her job as a school administrator. Mais asserts that school officials severely harassed and discriminated against her after she raised concerns about the curriculum. A trial is scheduled for her case in October, Wagner said.

Outside of Virginia, other courts are debating similar curricula concerns.

In 2020, a black mother from Nevada sued a charter high school after its mandatory “Sociology of Change” course required her biracial son and other students to label themselves as either “oppressor” or “oppressed” based on their race, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, and religion. The school backed down after a federal judge ruled its policies unconstitutional.

A school employee in Missouri and one in Illinois filed lawsuits in 2020 challenging mandatory training in a similar “anti-racist” curriculum. The educators contended the training violated their free speech rights by not allowing them to express disagreement with its contents. This February, the Southeastern Legal Foundation argued the case before the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on behalf of the teachers. A ruling is still pending.

Concerns over curriculum like Albemarle’s are about ensuring all have equal treatment in the classroom, Wagner said.

“This case is about students’ right to equal treatment in the classroom, regardless of race, regardless of their parents’ religion, their religion,” Wagner said. “They should be treated equally and parents should have the right to protect them from unequal treatment.”