South-Carolina
Federal court revives NAACP lawsuit challenging SC education law limiting how schools can teach race
A legislative effort to put a similar ban in regular state law — minus the “discomfort” item — failed in 2024 after the House and Senate couldn’t agree on how it would be enforced.
A second part of the lawsuit and appeal concerned the Lexington Three school district’s decision to remove the book “Stamped,” by noted anti-racist author Ibram X. Kendi from its libraries.
Kendi alleges in the lawsuit that the removal of his book constitutes unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination, linked to the budget provision because at least one member of the district review committee pointed to the law as a reason for the removal.
Lydon had also tossed that claim on standing grounds, which the appeals court similarly reversed, finding that the lawsuit “plausibly alleges” that Kendi’s book was pulled from shelves because of the budget provision.
As with the AP course part of the lawsuit, Agee’s opinion doesn’t rule on the larger legal question of whether an author has a First Amendment right to keep their book in a school library, just that it’s not reason to deny the author standing.
The Budget Provision
The Budget Provision
The following proviso has been included in South Carolina’s annual budgets since 2021.
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.