Christian teachers across California are being told they must complete a state-mandated training on LGBTQ+ issues called PRISM, then pass a test on it to keep their jobs. That test forces them to answer questions affirming things their Christian faith condemns. Most simply take it and comply.
They don’t have to. A Christian legal organization, led by Dean Broyles, president of the National Center for Law and Policy, has been winning religious accommodations for teachers who refuse to comply, with a 100 percent success rate. Every single teacher who has asked for an exemption has received one. Unfortunately, thousands of California’s Christian teachers are quietly going along with PRISM anyway, unaware that the law has been on their side the whole time.
What PRISM Actually Does
PRISM stands for Providing Relevant, Inclusive Support that Matters. It grew out of Assembly Bill 5, the Safe and Supportive Schools Act, which directed the California Department of Education to build an LGBTQ+ cultural competency training for teachers and staff serving grades seven through twelve. CDE handed the job to the Los Angeles County Office of Education, which brought in more than a dozen activist groups, including the Trevor Project and the ACLU of Southern California, to write the actual PRISM content. No religious leaders were consulted. PRISM is the statutory model training, and all alternatives must be substantially similar.
What came out the other end is not a mere training. PRISM coercively indoctrinates, seeking to change core beliefs, actions, and words.
PRISM instructs teachers that the “best practice” is to affirm a student’s self-selected gender identity no matter what, regardless of the student’s biological sex and regardless of what the teacher believes. It requires teachers to use whatever name and pronouns a student picks, even if that means concealing the change from the student’s own parents. And it isn’t passive video-watching. PRISM includes quizzes built into the course, and teachers have to select the “correct” answer on gender ideology before the system will let them move to the next lesson.
(See more PRISM details here…)
For a Christian teacher who believes Genesis 1:27, that God created human beings male and female, this is a test they cannot pass without affirming, in writing, something their faith won’t let them affirm. Every year, through the 2029-2030 school year, they’re asked to do it again.
The Right Nobody Told Them About
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act both require employers, including public school districts, to reasonably accommodate an employee’s sincerely held religious beliefs. The only exceptions are narrow: the employer can show the accommodation would impose an undue hardship, or can produce actual evidence the request is insincere. Since the Supreme Court’s 2023 decision in Groff v. DeJoy, “undue hardship” means a real, substantial cost to the district, not mere inconvenience. A district that can’t point to a specific, significant burden has to accommodate the teacher’s request.
The California Department of Education’s own FAQ page on the training states flatly that it is “required” for every certificated employee in grades seven through twelve. It does not mention religious accommodation once. Districts have been led to believe, and to tell their teachers, that PRISM has no exceptions. That was never true. A Christian teacher can request an exemption from the training itself, and from being forced to use a student’s preferred name and pronouns or affirm a gender identity in the classroom, on the same religious accommodation grounds that have protected Sabbath observance and other faith practices in the workplace for decades.
What 100 Percent Looks Like on the Ground
Broyles’ organization created a potent and effective legal demand letter that starts by outlining a teacher’s sincerely held religious beliefs about human sexuality, lays those beliefs against exactly what PRISM requires, and asks for a full religious exemption, not just from taking the course, but from having to enforce its ideology in the classroom.
The Pacific Justice Institute, another Christian legal organization, has joined the effort and is helping additional teachers across the state seek the same accommodations.
Broyles estimates that between his organization and PJI, they have helped somewhere between 75 and 125 teachers so far this year. Every one of them received some form of accommodation, including some who were exempted from all five years of AB 5 training. Not one school district has said no so far. Most districts have granted full, multi-year exemptions, some running all the way through the 2029-2030 school year. A few have offered a substitute course so watered down that objecting teachers found it acceptable rather than needing a full exemption. But no district Broyles or PJI has represented has been able to make an outright refusal to accommodate stick.
Not every PRISM “alternative” training offered by districts is created equal. AB 5 allows a district to swap in a different training as long as it is substantially similar to PRISM, and at first, most alternatives barely differed from it: Broyles rated the typical knockoff an eight or nine out of ten as bad as PRISM itself, still forcing the same pronoun, name, and affirmation demands. His clients kept objecting to those too. But at least one district took a different approach: instead of copying the LA County Office of Education’s model, it went back to the bare statutory language of AB 5 and built a training around only what the law actually requires, stripped of PRISM’s activist add-ons. What came out was a course Broyles rated closer to 10 or 20 percent as coercive as PRISM, light enough that his clients could accept it without violating their conscience.
These accommodations aren’t isolated to one corner of the state. Among the largest districts that have granted either one or multi-year exemptions are Santa Ana Unified School District in Orange County, Sweetwater Union High School District in San Diego County, San Jose Unified School District in the Bay Area, Ontario-Montclair School District in the Inland Empire, the Arcadia and Covina-Valley Unified School District in the San Gabriel Valley, and Ceres Unified School District in the Central Valley. In all, Broyles counts roughly 20 to 25 districts, charter schools, and county offices of education across California that have granted some form of religious accommodation so far this year.
Kristen’s Story
Two teachers at Arcadia Unified were among the first to request accommodation themselves, before contacting the National Center for Law & Policy. They asked their district directly for a religious accommodation. The district said no.
One of them, a math teacher named Kristen who has taught in Arcadia for eighteen years, later described what happened in her testimony at her own church. When her district sent out the PRISM assignment, she said, “I automatically just got sick to my stomach.” She opened the training hoping it would be purely informational. It wasn’t. It asked her to affirm things that went against her faith, including keeping secrets from parents. She and a colleague asked their principal for a religious accommodation. It was denied. The request went up to the district. A phone call with the head of human resources followed: take the training and pass the test, or be transferred and lose her job.
Then came the offer that should embarrass Arcadia Unified to this day. According to Kristen, the district suggested she simply let someone else click through the quiz answers for her. Broyles confirms the same pattern from his side of the case: administrators told these teachers they could take the training and let the district “do the testing for you,” effectively asking two Christian teachers to commit fraud rather than let them opt out honestly.
Kristen refused. “I’m not a liar,” she said. “That also goes against my beliefs.” She called her pastor. She fasted and prayed. She reached out to the Christian Educators Association, which connected her with Broyles at the NCLP. His demand letter ultimately secured a full five-year exemption for both her and her colleague, the first of its kind granted anywhere in California, according to Broyles.
“I’ve been excused for five years,” Kristen said. “You shouldn’t have to compromise your beliefs to teach in a public school.”
Why You Should Never File This Alone
Covina-Valley Unified School District shows what happens when a teacher tries to go it alone. Broyles’ organization ultimately represented eleven teachers there. Two of them had already tried to handle it themselves, submitting a generic template letter without an attorney’s signature. The district’s response, in Broyles’ words, was the nastiest he had seen doing this work. Word spread among the other nine teachers, and panic set in. One veteran teacher, more than twenty years in the district and nearing retirement, was so afraid of losing his job that he cleared out his classroom rather than wait for an answer.
Once Broyles’ organization submitted a single legal demand letter on behalf of all eleven, the district’s own outside law firm reviewed it and folded within weeks. Every one of the eleven was exempted from the PRISM training and kept their jobs.
The lesson isn’t subtle. Teachers who tried to go it alone were threatened and harassed. Teachers who let a legal organization make the request were accommodated, every time. If you are a Christian teacher considering this, do not download a form and submit it yourself. Contact an experienced legal organization built for this fight.
The Legal Ground Keeps Shifting in Their Favor
PRISM’s original parental-secrecy language took a direct hit this year. On March 2, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Mirabelli v. Bonta that parents have a constitutional right to know when their child is expressing gender confusion at school, and that teachers have a right to tell them, regardless of any state policy demanding secrecy. Then, on June 18, the Ninth Circuit relied on Mirabelli to block key provisions of AB 1955, California’s law barring schools from adopting parental-notification policies, in City of Huntington Beach v. Newsom. In the Ninth Circuit’s own words, AB 1955 “forbids the mandatory policies that the Constitution requires.”
Both rulings have forced PRISM’s ideological architects back to the drawing board. Districts that once treated the training as untouchable state law are now watching it get rewritten out from under them by federal courts. Several, including Brea-Olinda Unified School District, have simply dropped PRISM and built their own alternative rather than attempting to defend it.
A Daniel Moment
Broyles doesn’t sugarcoat what it costs a teacher to stand up. Many teachers have been pressured hard to just take the training and move on, to protect a paycheck or a career. His encouragement to them isn’t a legal argument. It’s a call to conscience.
“We’re really in a Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego moment,” Broyles said, “and we need all believers to take a stand and not bend their knee to any idol.” He doesn’t want a single teacher denying Christ before their students for the sake of a paycheck. “I think we have a higher calling, and we need to be really bold and courageous in living for an audience of one, and that one is Jesus and God Himself.”
California Family Council Vice President Greg Burt sees the same pressure bearing down on Christians statewide, not just in classrooms. “Christians in California are under increasing pressure to reject what the Bible teaches about sexuality, identity, and what it means to be a man and a woman,” Burt said. “If we don’t resist the pressure to parrot back to our employers and our legislators what they want to hear on these topics, the persecution of Christians will only get worse, and the harm LGBTQ ideology does to our children, our families, and our communities will only increase. This is what Christ meant when He said we are to be salt and light. Salt that loses its saltiness is worthless. If you comply simply out of fear of losing your job, you’re that worthless salt.”
California has tens of thousands of Christian teachers. This past school year, somewhere between 75 and 125 of them asked for the accommodation the law has always guaranteed them, and every one of them got it. There should be thousands.
If You’re a Christian Teacher in California
- You have a legal right to request a religious accommodation from PRISM or its alternative training, under both Title VII and California’s Fair Employment and Housing Act.
- That accommodation can cover the training itself and how you’re required to act in your own classroom, including pronoun and name usage and parental notification.
- Do not submit a request on your own. Teachers who tried were harassed and threatened. Teachers represented by an attorney were accommodated every time.
- Contact the National Center for Law and Policy (nclplaw.org) or the Pacific Justice Institute (pacificjustice.org) for help.
Check out California Family Council’s Parental and Teachers Resource page, and listen below as Dean Broyles, with the National Center for Law and Policy, and Michael Peffer, with Pacific Justice Institute, explain how they are helping teachers avoid taking PRISM training.
