(Headline USA) Far-left activist groups and teachers unions said Friday that they will sue to overturn Georgia’s anti-indoctrination law banning the teaching of certain Marxism-based racial concepts, claiming the ban on the widely debunked theories being spread in public schools violated First Amendment rights to free expression and 14th Amendment rights to equal protection.
“As a classroom teacher I am confused and concerned about how this law will impact not only my classroom, but my career,” complained history teacher Jeff Corkill, a teacher at DeKalb County’s Tucker High School, in a statement.
Corkill sued his previous school district, Gwinnett County, after complaining that they had targeted him with bad performance evaluations following his arrest at a protest.
“Like many educators in Georgia, I can’t figure out what I can or can’t teach under the law, and my school district’s administrators don’t seem to understand the law’s prohibitions either,” he whined.
The radical Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Education Association and the Georgia Association of Educators sent a notice to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr notifying Carr of their intent to sue in federal court.
Kara Richardson, a spokesperson for Carr, said the office had received the letter but declined comment, as did a spokesperson for state schools Superintendent Richard Woods.
Gov. Brian Kemp earlier this year signed House Bill 1084 into law.
Republicans said the measure, based on a now-repealed executive order from President Donald Trump, was necessary to ban critical race theory, a network of precepts pushed since the 1960s by pro-Marxist subversives that replaces communist concepts of class inequality with the Jim Crow-era notion of racial inequality to argue that minorities are inherently inferior and must thus be given special treatment.
Banned “divisive concepts” include claims that the U.S. is “fundamentally or systematically racist,” that any people are “inherently racist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,” and that no one “should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of his or her race.”
Bills using identical language have been proposed in dozens of states—backed by the Center for Renewing America, a think tank led by former Trump administration officials.
The SPLC, a once vaunted civil-rights organization that has morphed tragically into a leftist hate group, faced a scandalous restructuring in 2019 after some of its own top leaders were exposed for making racist and sexist remarks.
Meanwhile, teachers unions including the NEA have been credited with the extensive shutdowns of schools during the coronavirus pandemic—a bargaining chip that they largely used as political leverage to undermine the Trump administration.
The so-called National Report Card recently revealed the nearly insurmountable losses that children suffered as a result, prompting union bosses to endorse a sort of amnesty for those responsible for COVID fearmongering and exploitation.
The unions likewise have been behind coordinated, well-funded efforts to replace traditional school curricula with “woke” CRT indoctrination.
“Efforts to expand our multicultural democracy through public education are being met with frantic efforts in Georgia to censor educators, ban books, and desperate measures to suppress teaching the truth about slavery and systemic racism,” Georgia Association of Educators General Counsel Mike McGonigle said in a statement.
School districts must respond to complaints, and people who don’t like the outcome can appeal to the state Board of Education. If the board finds the school district in the wrong, it could suspend some or all of its waivers from state regulation.
Suits have been filed challenging similar laws in states including Florida, Ohio, Oklahoma and New Hampshire.
Other Georgia laws pushed through this year in response to the Left’s shocking overreach have included those allowing the state athletic association to ban transgender girls from playing high school sports, codifying parental rights, forcing school systems to respond to parental challenges of books and increasing tax credits for private school scholarships.
Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press
