State Rep. George Hruza, a Republican from Huntleigh and son of a Holocaust survivor, presents a bill intended to combat antisemitism on the Missouri House floor Feb. 11 (Tim Bommel/House Communications).
A requirement that public schools and universities report antisemitic discrimination to the state passed the Missouri House Monday on a 109 to 21 vote.
Combatting antisemitism is especially important to the bill’s sponsor, state Rep. George Hruza, a Republican from Huntleigh. His mother survived the Holocaust after imprisonment in the Mauthausen concentration camp, and two of his grandparents and three great grandparents were murdered in Auschwitz, he told lawmakers last year on Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“Jewish students should be able to go to school without fear for their safety,” Hruza said Monday during a House debate. “They should be able to focus on their studies and go about their life without fear, just like their non-Jewish classmates.”
The legislation seeks to target antisemitism on college campuses and in K-12 classrooms by mandating that schools report incidents to Title VI coordinators within the state departments of education and higher education. The coordinators would investigate complaints of discrimination and harassment and compile an annual report, which would be given to state lawmakers and published on the departments’ websites.
Pushback on the bill centered around free-speech concerns, which was debated when Hruza filed the bill last year as well. He attempted to remedy this problem with a provision that explicitly shields “any right protected under the First Amendment.”
For some, this didn’t fix the problem. They pointed to the bill’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism “including its contemporary examples.”
The definition has been widely adopted among U.S. states and included in orders at the federal level, but even the definition’s lead drafter worries it is being weaponized to suppress political speech.
One of the examples adopted in the bill labels “claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” as antisemitic. The bill allows criticism of Israel as long as it is “similar to criticism toward any other country.”
State Rep. Elizabeth Fuchs, a St. Louis Democrat, said this will “shut down debate about what is happening in Israel and Palestine.”
“Who determines what is and isn’t criticism similar to any other country? This isn’t clear,” she said. “This bill will lead to many lawsuits, and that is the point to stifle critical speech.”
Others worried that the bill focuses on just one minority group.
State Rep. Bridget Walsh Moore, a St. Louis Democrat, said she would support the legislation if it tracked hate crimes across groups.
“There is a rise in antisemitism across this country. No one is denying that,” she said. “But hate crimes across all minorities are up. To signify one and say that it is worse than the others is a really dangerous slope to start.”
While much of the bill’s opposition came from Democrats, the party was split when it came to vote with nine in favor and 18 voting “present.”
State Rep. Ian Mackey, a Democrat from St. Louis, said he understood frustrations with the legislation but thinks the public reporting of antisemitism could compel schools to take more action.
“We’re going to see institutions, perhaps some be embarrassed by the amount of incidents that they have to report and do everything they can to reduce them,” he said.
The bill now goes to the Senate for consideration. Last year, a Senate committee unanimously passed the legislation and it was added to a larger anti-discrimination bill but ultimately did not become law.
SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX