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Gov. Gavin Newsom has appointed the chief administrator of the California State University’s Civil Rights Office to direct a new Office of Civil Rights under the governor’s purview.
Lele Yutzy has been the CSU’s systemwide senior director of the Office of Civil Rights since 2024. Before that, he was a civil rights attorney in the Office of Civil Rights at the United States Department of Education from 2020 to 2024 and an attorney advisor with the Social Security Administration for five years.
Yutzy, 37, will oversee the enforcement of Assembly Bill 715, a highly contested anti-discrimination law that went into effect Jan. 1. Last month, a Santa Clara County judge threw out a lawsuit challenging AB 715 filed by teachers who claimed that the law would infringe on their First Amendment rights and curb their ability to teach controversial subjects like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
AB 715 established the Office of Civil Rights, including a yet-to-be-appointed antisemitism prevention coordinator, whom Yutzy will oversee.
Carole Yellen, the American Jewish Committee’s California education policy director, praised Yutzy’s appointment.
“We welcome the opportunity to work with Director Yutzy to help realize the full promise of AB 715’s landmark reforms,” Yellen said in a press release. “We look forward to the state’s continued progress on filling the Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator and additional civil rights coordinator positions, which the law also requires. The staffing of these offices is essential to ensuring that all students have the opportunity to learn in nurturing and inclusive environments free from discrimination.
On Thursday, a day after Newsom announced Yutzy’s appointment, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights announced it would investigate allegations that two CSU campuses permitted and perpetuated, antisemitic harassment against students.
The news release asserted that San Jose State University students have allegedly been threatened, shunned and made to feel unwelcome in classrooms because of their Jewish ancestry. It said that San Francisco State University faculty members have used their positions of authority to create a hostile environment for Jewish students, and that the federal Office of Civil Rights has received complaints of antisemitic graffiti on campus and attempted break-ins targeting Jewish students.
According to the press release, both universities “reportedly failed to acknowledge or meaningfully respond to cases of antisemitic harassment on campus, seeming, in some instances, even to condone such abhorrent acts.”
