Education

Racists lose in court

September 14, 2026

Trent England

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit upheld an anti-racism law passed by the Oklahoma Legislature in 2021 and signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt. The ACLU had challenged House Bill 1775, which prohibits public schools from teaching that any race or either sex is inherently superior or inferior, that anyone deserves to be discriminated against on such a basis, or that certain racial groups cannot compete in a meritocracy.

The ACLU’s arguments against HB 1775 were disingenuous. The group claimed that the bill is vague and thus will stifle teaching about racism and racial injustices like slavery and Jim Crow. They insisted, without any evidence, that this was the purpose of the bill. It was all a blatant lie, evident to anyone who simply reads the bill (I include the full text of the controversial section at the end of this post). Thankfully, the court rejected all of the ACLU’s arguments.

Humorously, the ACLU wants to spin this as a win. Megan Lambert of the Oklahoma ACLU claimed the judges “narrowed” the law “out of existence” because they found that it only prohibits teaching that supports discrimination. This is what the bill says, and what supporters always said that it says. Only the ACLU and its cronies ever claimed anything else.

Groups like the ACLU talk about opposing racism, but their actions betray another agenda. The original plaintiff in the ACLU’s case was the “Black Emergency Response Team,” an apparently racially exclusive student group at the University of Oklahoma. One of its founders described BERT as the “activist wing of the black community.” A brief filed in support came from the now-discredited Southern Poverty Law Center. These groups seem to be following the lead of racist academics like Ibram Kendi, who has infamously claimed that “the only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination.”

OCPA filed a brief on the winning side, pointing out that research shows what common sense suggests: that teaching “critical race theory” or “critical social justice” foments racism. It leaves students hoping to find racial bias, assuming it is everywhere, and thus more fearful and less willing to talk honestly about race-related topics.

HB 1775 continues to expose the hypocrisy of those who claim to be anti-racist but who really want a different kind of racism. People who are obsessed with race, who desire to divide people by skin color or ethnicity, who think these divisions are in themselves important—those are the racists. Americans who are not obsessed with race are not. This is how most Americans are today, and why Martin Luther King struck a chord with his insistence that people “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

Read the language of the challenged section of HB 1775 below.

No teacher, administrator or other employee of a school district, charter school or virtual charter school shall require or make part of a course the following concepts:

a.     one race or sex is inherently superior to another race or sex,

b.     an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously,

c.      an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment solely or partly because of his or her race or sex,

d.     members of one race or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race or sex,

e.     an individual’s moral character is necessarily determined by his or her race or sex,

f.       an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex,

g.     any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex, or

h.     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.