Community college professors in California sue over DEI rules

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California community college professors allege their First Amendment rights were violated by a state diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) requirement. 

Key Players

Founded in 1999, FIRE, or The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, is an organization that says it fights to “defend and sustain the individual rights of all Americans to free speech and free thought” by protecting First Amendment rights in higher education. The Foundation provides research as well as legal assistance, and previously sued Florida over its “Stop WOKE Act” in 2022.

Sonya Christian is the State Chancellor of California Community Colleges. She proclaims herself to be a “fierce advocate for the life-changing ability of community colleges to reach underserved populations and educate the future workforce.” She is named as a defendant in the lawsuit. 

Further Details

In March 2022, the California Community Colleges (CCC) released a proposal that would amend the California Code of Regulations to include DEI and accessibility standards in tenure evaluation.

Under the proposal, educational administrators and faculty members applying for tenure would be evaluated on their “demonstrated, or progress toward, proficiency in diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA)-related competencies.”

This includes promoting anti-racist policies and showing cultural competency in connection with students’ backgrounds. Further guidance would be provided by the CCC chancellor, who, under the proposal, was directed to “adopt and publish a guidance describing DEIA competencies and criteria” to be “utilized in community college district performance evaluations of employees and faculty tenure reviews.”

On April 22, 2022, FIRE released a statement raising concerns about the initiative, arguing that “the proposed regulations would unconstitutionally require faculty to profess allegiance to and to promote a contested set of ideological views.”

The statement further asserts that enforcing a certain perspective on “cultural competency” and “intersectionality,” terms that are defined in the proposal, would enforce “rigid ideological conformity on issues of public and academic debate” and “severely infringe on faculty members’ freedom of inquiry and freedom to teach without fear of reprisal.”

Despite these concerns, the system rolled out the proposal with minimal changes a few months later in a faculty contract that further iterates the DEIA standards. 

Outcome

On Aug. 17, 2023, a group of six California community college professors filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court in Fresno, California, naming Sonya Christian and leaders of the State Center Community College District as defendants.

According to the lawsuit, the CCC standards “force professors to endorse the government’s view on politically charged questions regarding diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.”

“Hearing uncomfortable ideas is not curricular trauma, and teaching all sides of an issue is not weaponizing academic freedom,” said Loren Palsgaard, one of the professors involved in the lawsuit. She said she will no longer assign Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter From Birmingham Jail” as reading for her students, in part because it contains a racial slur.

A science professor, Bill Blanken, argued it would be too difficult to incorporate DEI into his chemistry curriculum.

Melissa Villarin, a spokesperson for the chancellor, said the office would not comment at this time.

“Whether it’s states forcing professors to teach DEI concepts or states forcing them not to teach concepts that lawmakers deem ‘woke,’ the government can’t tell university professors what views they are or aren’t allowed to debate in the classroom,” FIRE attorney Jessie Appleby declared in an Aug. 17 statement.