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August 23, 2017

Judge Rules Arizona Ethnic Studies Ban is Unconstitutional
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In a victory for educators and ethnic studies advocates, a federal judge
has ruled the state of Arizona violated students' First and Fourteenth
Amendment rights by eliminating a Mexican-American studies program from
Tucson public schools. In 2010, Arizona passed a controversial law
banning the teaching of any class designed for a particular ethnic group
that would "promote resentment toward a race or class of people." The
law ended up eliminating Tucson's ethnic studies program and banning
seven books from public school classrooms, including "Rethinking
Columbus: The Next 500 Years"; Shakespeare's play "The Tempest";
"Pedagogy of the Oppressed" by Paulo Freire and "Chicano!: The History
of the Mexican American Civil Rights Movement."


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