As the Missouri legislature begins its 2026 session on Wednesday, George Hruza, a Republican state representative, told JNS that he is “very hopeful” that his bill addressing Jew-hatred in public K-12 schools and public colleges and universities will pass.
“I’m a son of a Holocaust survivor, so I feel very strongly about this issue,” he told JNS.
The bill, which Hruza prefiled on Dec. 1, would codify the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, providing schools with a standard for determining whether an incident is antisemitic.
Schools “should be addressing that in a non-discriminatory way, the same way they would deal with some kind of racist incident,” he said.
The legislation would also require schools to report all antisemitic incidents to the Title VI coordinator at the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The coordinator would then evaluate whether the schools adequately responded and issue annual reports to the legislature that will be published on the department’s website.
“The primary impetus for the bill is to ensure Jewish students’ safety,” Hruza told JNS.
“We’re dealing with this unprecedented rise in antisemitic incidents across the country—actually across the world—so we’re now focused on making sure students can go to school without fear of harassment or intimidation or worse,” he said.
Hruza added that there are “quite a few individuals” willing to testify in support of the bill, including high school students as well as students from Washington University in St. Louis who “have been harassed and intimidated and worse.”
‘Tried to sweep them under the rug’
Rabbi Jeffrey Abraham of Congregation B’nai Amoona, a Conservative synagogue in the St. Louis area, told JNS that the Jewish community has been working with Hruza on the legislation, which has bipartisan backing.
“We’re hopeful we can get it passed,” he said. “It’s an important bill because we’ve dealt with a number of antisemitic incidents in local schools here, and in some cases, the school administrations and school boards have tried to sweep them under the rug.”
The bill, he said, would force accountability.
Abraham cited an instance in which faculty members in a local school district allegedly tried to intimidate Jewish students, including by wearing keffiyehs at school. Despite the community advocating for the teenagers involved, he said many of their complaints to the school and district have gone unchecked.
If schools are “forced to report antisemitic incidents, they might actually try to do more in their schools and in their districts to ensure these incidents don’t happen as frequently,” Abraham told JNS.
He added that he’s “fairly optimistic” that the bill will pass the legislature this time around.
A similar bill passed in the Missouri House of Representatives last year with bipartisan support but stalled in the Senate after being introduced late in a legislative session that then adjourned early, Hruza said. He is optimistic this time, as the legislation not only has bipartisan support but also backing from law enforcement.
“They actually are really eager to have some kind of definition of antisemitism so that they can determine when there’s an incident whether it falls in that category,” he told JNS.
While companion legislation has been filed in the state Senate, a second bill was also prefiled in the House by Ian Mackey, a Democratic state representative, to ensure it reached across the aisle.
“I filed the same language so we can make it a bipartisan push and have a Democratic and Republican companion bill,” Mackey told JNS.
Usually, when this happens, the bills will be combined into one during a committee hearing, Hruza said.
Mackey, who is not Jewish, told JNS that the most important part of the bill is that it requires schools to report all antisemitic incidents to the state’s education department.
“When the department gets this information, and light is shown on it and reported in the media, it tends to have the effect of reducing instances,” he said. “That’s my hope.”
Mackey said he is “pretty confident” the bill will “sail through the House right away,” leaving five months for it to pass the Senate before the session ends in May.
“I’m hopeful that it will,” he told JNS.
