The silhouettes of students from approximately 5 different San Francisco high schools are seen on the ground as they hold flags and signs outside Balboa High School during a walk out in October 2023. SFUSD Students called for mass walkouts of high school students to protest the ongoing killing of Palestinians in Gaza by the Israeli military and to demand an immediate ceasefire. Such action has caused some Jewish students to allege they’ve been harassed, with one student in San Leandro suing her school.
Lea Suzuki/S.F. Chronicle
An East Bay Jewish teenager sued her principal, two former teachers and her school district this week, alleging “pervasive and unrelenting” antisemitic harassment and discrimination over two years leading to panic attacks and a precipitous drop in her GPA.
High school senior Eden Horwitz, along with her mother Montana Horwitz, filed the lawsuit in Alameda County Superior Court on Tuesday claiming the San Leandro Unified School District administrators failed to protect her from taunts, antisemitic rallies and anti-Jewish course content, among other allegations during the 2023-2024 and 2024-2025 school years.
District officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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The lawsuit is ongoing evidence of the fallout from the Israel-Hamas war in Bay Area schools, where accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia have pitted students, parents and teachers against each other for more than two years, at times leading to formal district complaints and appeals to state officials to intervene.
While Eden’s case centers around perceived antisemitism, it is taking the case to Superior Court and challenging not only the district, but individual teachers and a principal who, attorneys claim, ignored the pleas of a bullied student to intervene on her behalf. Instead, the educators penalized her instead, according to the lawsuit.
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The hostility not only had an impact on her high school experience, but her future, her attorneys said, and she is entitled to not only compensatory damages from the district, but compensatory and punitive damages from her teachers and principal as well.
Eden, now a senior at San Leandro High School, was part of the school’s Social Justice Academy, an academic learning community, which took a pro-Palestinian stand following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and the ensuing war, according to the suit.
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In the classroom, teachers supported students who expressed support for Hamas and disparaged Jewish people and the state of Israel while promoting and participating in pro-Palestinian walkouts, with Eden increasingly ostracized because she is Jewish, the legal filing claimed.
Eden’s classmates “demanded she answer for her entire people, wielded ‘Zionist’ as a slur, and held her personally responsible for ‘genocide’ — all because she is Jewish,” according to the lawsuit. “Peers with whom she had maintained long-standing relationships dating back to elementary school terminated their friendships with her.”
She stopped wearing her Star of David necklace as a protective measure, the filing stated.
Attorneys for Eden and her mom said they were seeking “systemic change.”
“This case exemplifies a disturbing trend: schools that champion social justice while turning a blind eye to antisemitism,” said attorney Jerome Marcus, of The Deborah Project, in a statement.
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Eden’s complaints to her teachers and administrators about the bullying were met with inaction and, despite a formal complaint filed by her mother, the district remained “deliberately indifferent to the reported discrimination,” according to the lawsuit.
The case is the latest of dozens of administrative complaints and court challenges against Bay Area school districts related to antisemitism as well as Islamophobia in recent years, including cases related to biased instruction, classroom displays, participation in political actions or the failure to enforce state and federal laws to protect students from discrimination.
Examples have included Islamophobia or antisemitism in school-related graffiti or online postings as well as teacher union resolutions supporting Palestinian liberation or declaring Israel an “apartheid state” where its leaders “espoused genocidal rhetoric and policies,” as was the case in Oakland.
In April 2025, following a formal complaint filed by parents and the Bay Area Jewish Coalition, state officials found two Cupertino ethnic studies teachers violated California law and discriminated against Jewish students by failing to provide balanced instruction regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Complaints In Berkeley alleged a student’s hijab was ripped off during class, Arab and Muslim students were called terrorists while another student was told, “You have a big nose because you’re a stupid Jew.”
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In January, the state Department of Education found Oakland district administrators failed to address discrimination against “Jewish or Israeli persons,” following a complaint of multiple complaints of antisemitism and then sued the district in March after a deadline passed to correct the problems.
The San Leandro lawsuit has asked the court to require the district to provide mandatory training for all staff and students on antisemitism; suspend operation of the Social Justice Academy until antisemitic content is removed from curricula; improve the complaint process and issue a statement denouncing antisemitism, among other demands.
But in Eden’s case, there are more demands given what her attorneys claim is a significant personal impact from the hostile climate: Her academic performance declined, making her ineligible to participate in interscholastic sports. She had been a viable candidate for collegiate athletic scholarships in track and field, according to the lawsuit.
Her mental health suffered leading to her need for special accommodations in school, her attorneys said. In March 2025, according to the lawsuit, district officials expelled Eden from the Social Justice Academy, saying she failed to adhere to academic and attendance requirements, which conflicted with her mandated accommodations.
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In addition, the suit is looking for compensatory damages from all defendants for emotional distress and physical injury as well as punitive damages from the principal and two teachers.
“Faculty didn’t just ignore the antisemitic abuse — they fueled it,“ said the Horowitz’s attorney, Ryan Weinstein, of the Boston-based firm Ropes & Gray, in a statement. “And when confronted with the truth, the District didn’t investigate; it retaliated.”