The 29,000-member California Faculty Association, California State University’s teachers’ union, is spearheading a backdoor legislative push to repeal the time, place and manner restrictions implemented across the state’s university system following its 2024 anti-Israel encampments. 

The California Faculty Association, which represents faculty across the 23 campuses of the California State University system, announced it would sponsor AB 2551, authored by Assemblymember Sade Elhawary. AB 2551 would repeal SB 1287 — California’s landmark campus safety and civil rights law — in its entirety by Jan. 1, 2029.

Under SB 1287, which was introduced in August 2024, California’s public universities and colleges must adopt and enforce rules against violence, harassment, intimidation and discrimination. 

It mandates the establishment of clear, content-neutral protest guidelines and requires schools to provide mandatory student training on free speech limits. The legislation bars tent encampments, overnight demonstrations and in some cases wearing masks, signatures of the spring 2024 anti-Israel protest movements both within the Cal State schools and across universities nationwide. Cal State LA played host to a  40-day encampment in 2024, in which protesters barricaded and trashed an administration building. 

“SB 1287 was the product of a public and transparent year-long negotiation process — hearings, testimony, amendments, and ultimately an overwhelming bipartisan vote,” said David Bocarsly, CEO of Jewish California, a coalition of local Jewish organizations formerly known as JPAC. “Jewish students across California are safer because of it. AB 2551 uses a backroom maneuver to fully erase that progress — without public process and without consulting the communities this law was designed to protect. Other communities wouldn’t stand for that, and we won’t either.” 

According to Jewish California, AB 2551 bypassed the normal legislative process through a “gut-and-amend” maneuver. This tactic replaces a bill’s existing language with entirely new provisions late in the session, effectively avoiding the rigorous public hearings and committee scrutiny that landmark measures like SB 1287 undergo. Consequently, the July 1 Senate Education Committee hearing will likely be both the first and last policy committee vote the bill receives.

Ahead of the hearing, dozens of local Jewish organizations are leading a coordinated push against the bill. The executive directors of every CSU and University of California campus Hillel, joined by Hillel International CEO Adam Lehman and Senior Vice President Mark Rotenberg, submitted a joint opposition letter. 

“The serious disruptions that had made parts of their campuses inaccessible quickly dissipated,” they wrote. “Jewish students who had withdrawn from campus life began returning. Importantly, the law did not silence free speech — it established a clear line between constitutionally protected expression and conduct that violates university rules and Jewish students’ civil rights by shutting them out of their own university.”

The bill was also opposed on Monday by the University of California in a letter to Senate Education Committee Chair Sasha Renée Pérez, warning that AB 2551 would “repeal important provisions of the University’s TPM framework that were recently implemented to strengthen campus safety, protect civil rights, combat antisemitism, and support the consistent administration of content-neutral conduct standards,” and that repeal “could complicate these ongoing efforts and diminish the effectiveness” of campus safety tools the university has invested significant resources to build.

Furthermore, the Jewish community and the California Legislative Jewish Caucus were reportedly not consulted before the maneuver, despite SB 1287 being one of the Jewish community’s top legislative priorities two years ago. 

CFA previously targeted the Jewish community last October when its candidate endorsement questionnaire singled out Jewish California — alongside the oil, tobacco, and police industries —- as a group that “harms working families,” asking political candidates to refuse to engage with the body. 

In March, CFA sponsored AB 2159, an attempt to gut AB 715, California’s landmark K-12 antisemitism prevention law. That bill was defeated following advocacy from Jewish groups. 

“CFA singled out our community for boycott. Then they sponsored legislation to gut our K-12,” said Bocarsly. “We said last time that CFA has an antisemitism problem. Three strikes confirms it. This is not a policy disagreement — it is a sustained campaign targeting Jewish students and the community that advocates for them.”