A major teachers union is challenging a New Hampshire law that limits lessons on race and sexism in schools. More lawsuits could follow across the country.

• A teachers union filed a federal lawsuit against New Hampshire’s “divisive concepts” law.
• The lawsuit is the American Federation of Teachers’ first legal challenge against such laws.
• AFT President Randi Weingarten said she won’t rule out additional legal action.

A major teachers union is leading the challenge against New Hampshire’s new “divisive concepts” law that limits teaching on racism, sexism and other forms of oppression.

The American Federation of Teachers-New Hampshire chapter, along with public school teachers and parents, filed a federal lawsuit against state officials on Monday. And AFT President Randi Weingarten isn’t ruling out more legal action in other states.

Teachers unions are keeping a close eye on state legislation they say is censoring educators by restricting discussion about race and gender in classrooms. Such bills and laws have cropped up across Republican-led states as the controversy over teaching about gender, diversity, and other race-related topics continues to divide the country. 

The lawsuit — AFT’s first challenging such laws — aims to protect teachers from New Hampshire’s “Right to Freedom from Discrimination in Public Workplaces and Education” statute. 

The statute is “unconstitutionally vague” in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment and chills teachers’ speech in violation of the First Amendment, putting them at risk for discussing accurate historical concepts in the classroom, according to the lawsuit, which seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.

“What they’re doing in New Hampshire is so corrosive,” Weingarten, a former civics teacher, told Insider. “It’s really a Hobson’s choice between whether you’re going to teach the New Hampshire curriculum on how you help kids engage in critical thinking and see justice issues and bias issues versus whether you’ll be blamed or shamed or pilloried … or actually disciplined or fired.”

Weingarten said other state laws are having a “chilling effect” on teaching, but she said the way New Hampshire Education Commissioner Frank Edelblut is carrying out the state’s law is “particularly pernicious.” She blamed Edelblut, who is named in the lawsuit along with the state attorney general and state Commission for Human Rights, for “facilitating the bullying and the intimidation of teachers.” 

After the law was signed in June, Edelblut created a webpage to help the public file an “intake questionnaire” that can lead to formal discrimination complaints against teachers. The website is for those who believe they or their child was discriminated against because their school was teaching that one group is superior to another group or “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

News of the webpage prompted a tweet from Moms for Liberty New Hampshire offering $500 for the first person that “successfully catches a public school teacher breaking this law.” Since then, educators have been reporting “online harassment, obscenities and vicious attacks,” according to the union which has likened the offer to a “bounty.”

“It’s a terrifying situation that they have put teachers in,” Weingarten said, which is why AFT-New Hampshire stepped in with help from the national union’s legal defense fund.

Spokespeople for Edelblut and the Commission for Human Rights declined to comment on pending litigation. Senior Assistant Attorney General Seth Zoracki at the New Hampshire  Department of Justice wrote in an email, “We are reviewing the lawsuit and will defend the law.”

This year, 54 bills have been introduced in 24 state legislatures to restrict teaching and training in schools, higher education and state agencies and institutions, according to a study by PEN America, a literary and human rights organization. Most bills target discussions of race, gender, US history and aim to ban “prohibited” or “divisive” concepts. By October 1,  at least 11 such bills had become law in nine states: Arizona, Arkansas, Idaho, Iowa, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Texas.

National Education Association President Becky Pringle, in a USA TODAY op-ed published in June, pointed to “the war on truth and history” and wrote that NEA — the nation’s largest union — would have teachers’ backs, “even if that leads us to the courtroom.” Meanwhile, AFT added $2.5 million to its existing $10 million legal defense fund to defend members against discipline for teaching “honest history.”  Weingarten said she’s been in close contact with affiliates throughout the country and teachers and parents are feeling bullied. She hopes the lawsuit will have an impact in other states.

Asked whether there will be more lawsuits, Weingarten said it depends on the circumstances. 

“The message is, we won’t rule anything out,” she said, “But we’re not taking these cases just to take these cases. We’re in a very volatile situation, and the one thing we don’t want to do, is we don’t want to make it more volatile.

“We want to solve the problem, and the problem is teachers are being stopped from teaching honest history,” she said. “Kids have a right to learn history and its implications.”