COLUMBIA — A state law banning certain lessons on race from K-12 public schools can remain in place, a federal judge said in a Monday order dismissing a lawsuit.
In January, several students and educators, along with an author and the state NAACP, sued to challenge a state law included in the state budget since 2021 that bans teachers from using eight concepts in classrooms. Among the banned concepts are the ideas that any race is inherently superior or automatically racist, that anyone is responsible for past atrocities because of their race, that someone’s worth is determined by race and that traits such as hard work are oppressive and racist.
That law didn’t cause concrete harm to the educators challenging it, and suspending it wouldn’t solve the issues the students and author in the lawsuit claimed it caused them, because other factors played a role, U.S. District Judge Sherri Lydon wrote in the Monday order. That wasn’t necessarily because she disagreed with their claims but because they didn’t meet the standards to bring a lawsuit in the first place, she wrote.
“The court recognizes that the issues raised are matters of public importance,” Lydon wrote. But because the people suing lacked the legal standing to challenge it, “the Constitution leaves their resolution to the democratic process rather than the federal courts.”
Each group involved in the case claimed the law caused a separate effect that harmed them. The students claimed the law caused the Department of Education to remove a class on Black history, while author Ibram Kendi argued it meant the removal of one of his books from school classrooms and libraries. A librarian and a teacher claimed the law forced them to change their lesson plans or risk being fired.
Altogether, those suing claimed the law went against their First Amendment rights to information, as well as the Constitution’s 14th Amendment’s guarantee of due process and equal protection.
During a July hearing, much of the argument in the case centered around the removal of an Advanced Placement African American Studies course following a two-year pilot program. The four students who joined the lawsuit, two of whom were members of the NAACP, either wanted to take the course but couldn’t or had signed up but had it removed from their class schedule, according to legal filings.
Deputy Superintendent Matthew Ferguson pointed to the law and “significant controversy around the course” as reasons for removing it from the roster for the 2024-2025 school year, though he also pointed to an upcoming scheduled review of the state’s social studies standards in a memo sent to superintendents statewide.
Because the department had multiple reasons to remove the course, and because Ferguson later said the primary reason was the scheduled review, suspending the law wouldn’t mean districts would have to reinstate the class, Lydon wrote in her order.
School districts have the option of offering an honors level course of African American history, and students can still take the end-of-course AP exam to potentially earn college credit. At schools with that option, students would have to pay the $98 to earn college credit, which the Department of Education covers only for classes on its roster, and AP classes give students more of a GPA bump than honors courses.
Suspending the law also wouldn’t mean Lexington County School District Three would have to reinstate Kendi’s book “Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You” in classroom lessons, Lydon wrote.
Kendi joined the lawsuit after a state-level review found that his book didn’t meet the criteria for factual accuracy and objectivity required to teach a nonfiction book. One anonymous reviewer also mentioned the budget clause as a reason to remove the book, though it wasn’t clear whether that played a role in the final decision, Lydon wrote.
Because reviewers had multiple reasons to remove Kendi’s book, most of which were based on a different state law about classroom materials, Kendi also lacked the ability to sue, Lydon decided.
A school librarian who stopped offering a reading club featuring diverse books and an English teacher who halted a lesson plan about systemic racism failed to prove the law actually harmed them, Lydon wrote. Instead, both said they feared for their jobs under the law, without proving their school districts actually intended to discipline them in any way, failing another prong of the test for legal standing, the judge decided.
Attorney General Alan Wilson called the order a win for his office.
“This case was never about real harm to students; it was about activists trying to push their political agenda through the courts,” Wilson said in a statement. “The ruling reaffirms that’s not how our system works.”
An attorney representing the students, educators and NAACP did not respond to a request for comment. It’s unclear whether those involved will appeal the decision.
Both Republican and Democratic legislators agreed the budget clause could cause confusion and end up stifling instruction. In 2023, the Senate passed a bill specifically protecting “historically accurate” discussions of slavery, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, segregation, racial lynchings and any “historical oppression of a particular group of people based on race, sex, ethnicity, class, nationality, religion, or geographic region.”
Opponents, many of whom didn’t realize the law would clean up the clause already in the state budget, fought against the bill over claims that it would cause teachers to censor their own lessons. The bill died in the House at the end of the 2024 legislative session.
What does the law say?
Since 2021, the state budget has included this clause:
For the current fiscal year, of the funds allocated by the Department of Education to school districts, no monies shall be used by any school district or school to provide instruction in, to teach, instruct, or train any administrator, teacher, staff member, or employee to adopt or believe, or to approve for use, make use of, or carry out standards, curricula, lesson plans, textbooks, instructional materials, or instructional practices that serve to inculcate any of the following concepts:
(1) one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex;
(2) an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously;
(3) an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his race or sex;
(4) an individual’s moral standing or worth is necessarily determined by his race or sex;
(5) an individual, by virtue of his race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex;
(6) an individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his race or sex;
(7) meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by members of a particular race to oppress members of another race; and
(8) fault, blame, or bias should be assigned to a race or sex, or to members of a race or sex because of their race or sex.
Nothing contained herein shall be construed as prohibiting any professional development training for teachers related to issues of addressing unconscious bias within the context of teaching certain literary or historical concepts or issues related to the impacts of historical or past discriminatory policies.
Skylar Laird covers the South Carolina Legislature and criminal justice issues. Originally from Missouri, she previously worked for The Post and Courier’s Columbia bureau.
SC Daily Gazette is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.
