California Faculty Association Sponsors Third Attack on Jewish Community in Less Than a Year – This Time Targeting Landmark College Campus Safety Law

SACRAMENTO, CA – Today, the California Faculty Association (CFA) announced they are the sponsor of AB 2551, authored by Assemblymember Sade Elhawary (D-South Los Angeles). Introduced through a last-minute gut-and-amend maneuver, AB 2551 would repeal SB 1287 – California's landmark campus safety and civil rights law – in its entirety by January 1, 2029.

A broad and growing coalition – including the University of California, Hillel International, the directors of every UC and CSU campus Hillel, and over 40 other Jewish organizations – has joined Jewish California in opposing the bill. The Senate Education Committee votes on the bill Wednesday, July 1.

AB 2551 marks the third time in less than a year that CFA has taken aim at the Jewish community. In October 2025, CFA's candidate endorsement questionnaire singled out Jewish California (then called JPAC) – alongside the oil, tobacco, and police industries – as a group that “harms working families,” asking political candidates to refuse to engage with California's Jewish community. In March 2026, CFA sponsored AB 2159 (Garcia), an attempt to gut AB 715, California's landmark K-12 antisemitism prevention law. Jewish California defeated that bill. Now CFA is back, this time targeting SB 1287, the Jewish community's hard-won protection for Jewish college students.

The pattern did not go unnoticed. When Jewish California raised concerns about AB 2551 with the author, Assemblymember Elhawary represented that the bill had no sponsor. CFA's formal sponsorship letter to the Senate Education Committee, dated June 25, 2026, tells a different story.

California Needed SB 1287 – and Widely Supported It

SB 1287, authored by then-Senator Steve Glazer (D-Orinda), was enacted in 2024 in response to a 2,000% spike in antisemitic incidents on California college campuses in the five months following the Hamas terrorist attacks on October 7, 2023, compared to the same period the year prior. The law requires UC and CSU campuses to:

• Update student codes of conduct to explicitly prohibit violence, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination;

• Establish and enforce clear content-neutral time, place, and manner (TPM) restrictions for protests;

• Develop training programs on civil discourse; and

• Publish those policies publicly so all students understand their rights and responsibilities.

SB 1287 was coauthored by over a dozen diverse legislators and passed with overwhelming bipartisan support: 35-3 in the Senate and 70-0 in the Assembly.

AB 2551 Quietly Circumvents the Legislature’s Public Process

AB 2551 was not introduced through the normal legislative process. It was inserted through a “gut-and-amend” – a procedure that replaces the language of a bill that has already cleared multiple legislative votes with entirely new language, late in the process, circumventing the public hearings, testimony, and scrutiny that SB 1287 itself underwent. As a result, Wednesday's hearing will likely be both the first and last policy committee vote this bill receives.

The Jewish community and the California Legislative Jewish Caucus were not consulted before the maneuver, despite SB 1287 being one of the Jewish community's top legislative priorities just two years ago. This parallels the introduction of AB 2159 earlier this year.

“I share the author’s goal of ensuring free speech on college campuses but she is going about it in absolutely the wrong way,” said Senator Steve Glazer, the author of SB 1287. “This last minute gut-and-amend action violates the rules of the Senate, denies the public a fair opportunity to participate, and fails the test of urgency. It also attempts to reverse legislation passed in 2024 by huge bipartisan margins of both houses and signed by Gov Newsom. She has never presented a bill of particulars outlining unfair enforcement of free speech rules and has demonstrated no effort to resolve any grievance at the university level. The bill sponsor is an antisemitic faculty union who has shown no regard for the safety of Jewish students on campus. They opposed the original bill and lost.”

“CFA singled out our community for boycott. Then they sponsored legislation to gut our K-12 antisemitism law. Now they are sponsoring legislation to repeal our college campus civil rights law.” said David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California. “We said last time that CFA has an antisemitism problem. Three strikes confirms it. This is not a policy disagreement – it is a sustained campaign targeting Jewish students and the community that advocates for them.”

Jewish California offered Assemblymember Elhawary to collaborate on a targeted fix for her stated concern about how campus conduct policies are being implemented, without dismantling the broader protections that have worked for Jewish students and students across California. She declined, insisting on full repeal.

A Broad and Growing Opposition Coalition

The University of California formally opposed the bill in a June 22 letter to Committee Chair Sasha Renée Pérez, warning that AB 2551 would “repeal important provisions of the University's TPM framework that were recently implemented to strengthen campus safety, protect civil rights, combat antisemitism, and support the consistent administration of content-neutral conduct standards,” and that repeal “could complicate these ongoing efforts and diminish the effectiveness” of campus safety tools the University has invested significant resources to build. The UC letter can be found here.

The directors of every UC and CSU campus Hillel, joined by Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman and Senior Vice President and General Counsel Mark Rotenberg, submitted a joint opposition letter. “The serious disruptions that had made parts of their campuses inaccessible quickly dissipated,” they wrote. “Jewish students who had withdrawn from campus life began returning. Importantly, the law did not silence free speech – it established a clear line between constitutionally protected expression and conduct that violates university rules and Jewish students' civil rights by shutting them out of their own university.” The Hillel letter can be found here.

Over 40 more diverse Jewish organizations from across California sent a joint statement opposing the bill, writing that they believe “in robust civic expression, including the right to engage in peaceful protest.” However, they continue, “If concerns exist about how TPM policies are being enforced on any particular campus, the appropriate response is accountability and transparency in enforcement – not the wholesale elimination of the civil rights protections that have made California’s campuses safer for Jewish students and all students who simply want to attend class, use the library, and pursue their education.” The coalition letter can be found here.

“SB 1287 was the product of a public and transparent year-long negotiation process – hearings, testimony, amendments, and ultimately an overwhelming bipartisan vote,” said David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California. “Jewish students across California are safer because of it. AB 2551 uses a backroom maneuver to fully erase that progress – without public process and without consulting the communities this law was designed to protect. Other communities wouldn’t stand for that, and we won’t either.”

Jewish California is urging all Californians to contact members of the Senate Education Committee before the July 1 vote and oppose AB 2551. To action alert can be found here.