Arizona bill to ban school ‘social justice’ courses dies quickly

Regional News

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Republican Rep. Bob Thorpe’s bill to ban K-12 schools and universities from teaching “social justice” is dead for the year, according to the chairman of the committee to which it has been assigned.

Republican Rep. Paul Boyer, chairman of the House Education Committee, said he would not hear Thorpe’s bill, effectively killing the legislation for the year. Boyer said the bill simply didn’t have the votes to pass his committee.

Thorpe’s HB2120, filed Thursday, would have banned classes that promote “resentment or social justice toward a race, gender, religion, political affiliation, social class or other class of people.”

Thorpe described the legislation as his “Martin Luther King Jr. bill” – even putting into the law that his intent is that the state not educate or judge people “by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

But civil rights activists have called the legislation an attempt to shut down conversations about racial and economic privilege.