LOCAL & STATE
John Neal
Anthony Crawford, Oklahoma City, Okla. high school teacher and plantiff noted in Black Emergency Response Team, et al., vs. Gentner Drummond. Photo Provided
Thwarts Controversial Oklahoma Law, HB 1775
A federal court judge has blocked enforcement of key provisions of an Oklahoma law that aimed to restrict educators from teaching America’s sordid racial history.
This legal battle centers around HB 1775, a law passed by the Oklahoma legislature in 2021, which restricts teachers from discussing race and gender. Judge Charles B. Goodwin, U. S. District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma, has granted a partial preliminary injunction that “will significantly curb the impact of Oklahoma’s classroom censorship law,” according to a statement released by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), a key plaintiff in the lawsuit.
Goodwin’s ruling this month has been a long-awaited victory for critics of the statute, who began their fight against it when it was passed three years ago. The implications of this law were starkly evident in Tulsa Public Schools (TPS), which suffered a downgrade in its accreditation due to ‘implicit bias’ training.
While not explicitly naming TPS, Judge Goodwin’s ruling shields all Oklahoma school districts under the Oklahoma Academic Standards state statutes as the lawsuit progresses and the adjudication continues.
In addition to finding several provisions unconstitutionally vague, the ruling clarified what educators can teach in the classroom. One penalty for violating HB 1775 is revoking a teacher’s license or teaching certification. Emerson Sykes, a national ACLU staff attorney who argued the case for the plaintiffs before the court, said, “K-12 teachers are now safe from the Act’s [HB 1775] most confusing restrictions” in a statement released following the ruling.
Megan Lambert, legal director for ACLU of Oklahoma, added, “We will continue to defend Oklahoma’s students and teachers from politically motivated censorship and racial discrimination.” The ACLU, a key plaintiff in the lawsuit, has been instrumental in advocating for the rights of educators and students in this case.
State and Education Department enjoined
The preliminary injunctive relief applies to enforcement actions the State of Oklahoma and the Oklahoma State Board of Education can take. The plaintiffs, formally named the “Black Emergency Response Team et al.,” cleared a high hurdle to obtain the injunction in the ruling. The decision was dated June 14. In particular, Judge Goodwin noted that a preliminary injunction is an extraordinary remedy, citing in his analysis the conditions that the plaintiffs had to establish. They include the following:
- A substantial likely success on the merits.
- Irreparable injury to the movant [plaintiff] if the injunction is denied
- The threatened injury to the movant outweighs the injury to the party opposing the preliminary injunction.
- An injunction would not be adverse to the public interest.
Applying these high standards, the Court found that multiple key law provisions of the statute should be struck down. Two of the so-called “prohibited concepts” Oklahoma lawmakers sought to censor concerned classroom instruction and discussions about discrimination and the treatment of others based on race or sex.
Judge Goodwin found these provisions were “simply unclear” to the point of being unconstitutionally vague.
Six of the eight concepts were not temporarily enjoined. Still, Judge Charles Goodwin made clear that language elsewhere in the law enabled teaching that “mistaken beliefs about the superiority of one race have existed in history [and] how such beliefs exist now.”
The judge disallowed another sentence in the HB 1775 text that he said could be reasonably interpreted as prohibiting discussing “how historic beliefs about race led to the enslavement and subjugation of Black men and women…” and thereby, the ruling allows the truthful teaching of the country’s racist history.
Judge Goodwin also clarified an interpretation of a provision in HB 1775, which the Oklahoma State Board of Education wrongly used to downgrade Tulsa Public Schools accreditation in 2021. The sanction was the result of a complaint by a white teacher at Memorial High School who said she felt discomfort from an outsourced training course on implicit bias, which she alleged “shame white people for past offenses in history.”
The course merely factually noted the role some whites have played in America’s racial history. Judge Goodwin wrote that coursework about adverse racial events was permitted to make persons uncomfortable so long as they were not taught that their race “should itself be a cause of that discomfort or shame.”
Where the teaching of history goes from here
While not granting a temporary injunction against the controversial statute in its entirety, the ruling made clear teachers should not be impeded in truthfully depicting racist events of the past or America’s struggle with bias and discrimination as it continues to exist today.
Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond defended the law for the State of Oklahoma. While his office could appeal the enjoined portions of the law to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, it has not yet done so. Drummond’s office issued a statement to The Oklahoma Eagle.
“It is gratifying the Court rejected the push by the ACLU and its fellow plaintiffs to allow teaching that one race is inherently superior to another,” it said. “Our office is reviewing the full ruling, which is complicated and nuanced.”
Oklahoma ACLU’s Lambert told The Oklahoma Eagle that the portions of the Act not enjoined will be decided on their merits in the same court. Lambert added, “HB 1775 has no place in the classrooms. K-12 educators now have much-needed guidance regarding what they can teach and can rely on the Oklahoma Academic Standards as a safe haven from the reach of HB 1775.”
Oklahoma City African American schoolteacher Anthony Crawford helped bring the lawsuit forward as a plaintiff. He told The Oklahoma Eagle in an interview he was afraid he would be fired for teaching the unbiased truth about the country’s racial past. (See https://theokeagle.com/2024/02/23/the-fate-of-oklahoma-race-based-law-may-be-decided-soon/)
Following the ruling, Crawford said, “Judge Goodwin’s ruling pushes our state closer to justice, especially for marginalized communities who have not only been historically abused but academically as well. We will continue to fight and convince the court that we are on the right side of the law.”
