Braden Hamelin and Mia Resnicow
The Anti-Defamation League has filed a federal Title VI Civil Rights complaint against the Baltimore City Public School System for the “egregious and persistent discrimination and harassment” of Jewish students at the hands of their fellow students and teachers.
The complaint was filed pro bono on behalf of several Jewish parents of students in the system and alleges that the BCPSS “has knowingly allowed its schools to become hostile environments for Jewish students, while neglecting to address numerous incidents of antisemitic harassment, bullying and discrimination,” the ADL stated in a press release.
“All schools have a fundamental obligation to maintain a learning environment that protects students from discrimination,” said James Pasch, the ADL’s vice president of litigation, in the press release. “On this essential measure of keeping its Jewish students safe from harassment and intimidation, Baltimore City Public Schools have failed.”
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin, including shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics, by recipients of federal financial assistance.
For an institution to be in violation of Title VI, the recipient of federal funds must be found to have a hostile environment based on race, color or national origin; to have noticed that a hostile environment existed; and to have failed to take quick and effective action to eliminate and prevent the hostile environment.
The complaint alleges years of antisemitic incidents within BCPSS that have become even more pronounced since Oct. 7, leading parents to file dozens of complaints with the school district.
Some incidents detailed in the complaint included Mt. Washington Elementary and Middle School.
Students sent a link via text to a “Zionist or Nazi?” quiz, performed daily Nazi salutes on school grounds, told Jewish students that “6 million [Jews] was not enough,” that “all Jews should die,” and made threats of calling Hamas on the Jewish students. Swastika graffiti also appeared frequently on school property at multiple schools with little punishment.
Another series of alleged incidents came from a specific teacher at Bard High School.
The complaint alleges that the teacher directed three Nazi salutes toward the sole Jewish student in the room during a single class period.
When the student later approached the teacher to express that doing the salute was harmful and uncomfortable, the teacher responded that “‘it is ok [for him] to do it because it does not cause anybody harm’ and that Student A ‘cannot sanitize his teachings,’” the official complaint filed by the ADL stated.
Additionally, the student reported the incident to an advisor and during the report the teacher walked in and suggested that the student did not belong in the social justice seminar he was teaching because they would be discussing the Israel-Palestinian conflict.
The teacher then allegedly continued escalating the next day, stating that he would be showing “American History X” to the class and the Jewish student should prepare because “there would be Nazis and antisemitism in the film,” according to the complaint.
The teacher continued by specifically referencing the student’s official complaint to other students in the class and informing them that he could no longer do Nazi salutes in class because the student had reported him.
The student eventually dropped the class and the school system conducted an investigation into the teacher’s conduct, which concluded that it had substantiated the allegations brought by the student.
Despite that conclusion, the complaint states that the teacher violated his confidentiality requirements by repeatedly sharing information about the complaint, the investigation and the student who had reported him. It adds that BCPSS took no disciplinary action against the teacher.
The complaint also details requests from parents asking for concrete action plans and educational programming for which schools allegedly offered inadequate responses or ignored the requests. Over a dozen investigations from the school board were labelled “inconclusive,” according to the official complaint.
“BCPS has permitted this conduct to increase in frequency and severity and has failed to promptly and effectively address discrimination and harassment in violation of its legal obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964,” the complaint stated.
The complaint requests that the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights require BCPSS to remedy the situation by: incorporating the IHRA definition of antisemitism in their policy documents, providing mandatory annual antisemitism training, implementing a Holocaust and antisemitism curriculum for middle and high schoolers, enforcing a zero-tolerance policy on antisemitic behavior, adopting new policies for employees regarding Title VI’s prohibition on retaliation, changing procedures for reporting a complaint of bias or hate crimes, reviewing its response to reports of discrimination, conducting an audit of students from grades 6-12 regarding school procedures around discrimination and several other suggestions.
This complaint comes on the heels of other reports of antisemitism in Maryland schools, as the Howard County Public School System reached an agreement with the OCR in January.
That agreement addressed concerns over the school system’s response to reports of harassment and discrimination of Jewish students during the 2022–2023 and 2023–2024 school years.
