A recent Third Circuit case reminds us that facts do matter and that, at least in the world of public education, fictional “history” and conspiracy theories may not be foisted on the public in the guise of a history lesson. Ali v. Woodbridge Twp. School District, 957 F.3d 174 (April 22, 2020). In the Ali case, a non-tenured public high school teacher who taught in New Jersey in the Woodbridge High School from September 2015 to September 2016, was teaching Holocaust denial to his students and was posting links to articles on the school’s website saying things like, “The Jews are like a cancer” and expressing conspiracy theories accusing the United States of planning a 9/11-style attack.

Ali’s teachings became known when an English teacher reported to a supervisor that her students “were questioning historical accounts of the Holocaust, opining that ‘Hitler didn’t hate the Jews,’ that statistics on the death counts were ‘exaggerated’” and that the students got this information from their world history teacher. By the time Ali’s teachings became known, they had already so influenced the thinking of at least some students that their written assignments were expressing doubts about the Holocaust, one student writing, “what they claim happened in the concentration camps did not really happen” and “Jews … had a much easier and more enjoyable life in the camps.”