“What matters to me, as a former teacher and current litigator, is that students see themselves in what they learn and feel empowered to make change,” says Leah Watson, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU's Racial Justice Program. “It’s unacceptable to force students to accept the government’s talking points even when those views are not only inaccurate, but racist and sexist.”
As a member of the ACLU’s Racial Justice Project since 2020, Watson’s work focuses on preventing the government from enforcing its discriminatory agenda. She has, understandably, been even busier since President Donald Trump was reelected and began to gut federally-supported diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and to coerce other entities – like universities or workplaces – into abandoning DEI entirely.
Watson was ready for it. She’s been here before.
Leah Watson
Credit: Leah Watson
Watson is a member of the legal team that challenged Florida’s Stop W.O.K.E Act — one of the broadest state laws to come out of the “war on woke” — that focused on restricting any instruction perceived as affirming the role that race plays in American society. The ACLU’s lawsuit successfully blocked enforcement of the higher education restrictions of the STOP W.O.K.E Act, a decision that has been appealed.
While blocking the Stop W.O.K.E Act is a win, Trump and conservative politicians have continued to pass unconstitutional laws and executive orders to censor student and faculty speech about race, racism, sex, and sexism. These bills not only violate educators’ First and 14th Amendments – they’re a violation of students’ First Amendment right to receive information, an injustice that Watson, a former Political Science and World History educator, is inspired to stop.
“Censorship has an outsized impact on young people who are in school for such a limited period and may never receive instruction necessary to equip them to live in a diverse society. They need to develop critical thinking, analysis, and problem solving skills to succeed,” Watson says. “The classroom should be that space; it should not be limited to regurgitation of the government’s talking points.”
When any student is denied the right to learn – one that includes instruction on racism and sexism, as well as narratives from BIPOC and LGBTQ authors, experts and characters – they are denied the right to see themselves reflected in what they’re taught, to form their own opinions, to express themselves and to truly connect to the concepts they’re learning. Watson notes that the current and proposed censorship laws would have prevented her from educating her students on their own history.
Leah Watson teaching class.
Credit: Leah Watson
“How could I explain the need for the 13th, 14th, or 19th Amendments without any discussion of racism or sexism?” she wonders. “What about the 3/5ths compromise or the existence of oppression in other cultures? Even current events, like racially-motivated mass shootings, require context that would be prohibited.”
In addition to ensuring her students had the tools needed to think critically in a diverse society, as an educator, Watson also personalised her teaching strategies to the strengths and weaknesses of students in a process known as differentiation, which is simply meeting students where they are. Some students need to learn vocabulary to access the textbook while others have mastered the vocabulary and are ready to build analytical skills, including prediction.
Even as she saw success with her students, Watson understood that the achievement gap isn’t limited to classrooms. “So many of the issues that stop students from learning – malnutrition, poverty, homelessness, violence – are things that happen before they even get to school,” Watson explains. “I wanted to have a tangible impact on young people [because I recognized that] performance on quizzes depends on more than classroom instruction. Students’ immediate needs must be met for their brains to have capacity to learn.”
Leah Watson's class working on a group project.
Credit: Leah Watson
Seeing the obstacles to closing the achievement gap inspired Watson to explore other avenues to support Black and brown families, especially students. While attending Harvard Law School, she worked with young people facing adversity, including children experiencing trauma and survivors of domestic violence. As a civil rights litigator, some of her earliest work challenged the criminalization of poverty, and developed strategies to reduce violent police encounters with students. She also focused on how race can be used to increase equity not just in school, but in the workforce, in health care, law enforcement, in trainings and more. Of course, the idea that race can – and should – be considered runs counter to the Trump administration’s discriminatory narrative that uses equity-based concepts and practices, like DEI and CRT, as racialized dog whistles.
“The so-called attack on DEI is much broader than actual DEI, which is a strategy to increase the recruitment, promotion, and retention of historically marginalized groups,” Watson says. “It is an attempt to re-whitewash history and avoid the historic, systemic, and present denial of opportunity and access due to white supremacy and patriarchy.”
Right now, anti-DEI efforts are the new frontier in the racial justice movement and Watson is at the forefront of the fight. For years, she has been following the anti-equity agenda to identify the key actors and the playbook they’re using to deny the existence of racism and sexism across industries or institutions in society. Today, she’s focused on using that information to mount an offense against attacks on DEI, like the Trump administration’s recent executive orders bullying private and governmental entities into abandoning legal DEI efforts to promote equity and remedy systemic discrimination.
For Watson, not only are the Trump administration’s efforts unlawful and harmful, they single out marginalized groups for erasure. So often, Watson explains, she speaks with clients who tell her she was one of the first people to listen to their experience and explain how their constitutional rights have been infringed. This reaffirms for Watson that, even when powerful politicians denigrate her work and her community, the fight for racial justice and equity is – and has always been – about people.
“To me, winning is not about winning a case,” Watson says. “It’s about winning someone’s understanding and faith. It’s about fighting for people whose existence is being ignored or erased.”
Our series, Behind the Fight for Our Rights, asks individuals defending our freedoms how they’re thinking about the next four years. Below, Watson shares insight into her life – both professional and personal – under the Trump administration.
ACLU: What are you most looking forward to in the next four years?
WATSON: I’m most looking forward to affirmatively pursuing and holding the line on consideration of race in various settings. I’m looking forward to resisting efforts to minimize or ignore the impact of racism across industries or institutions in society.
ACLU: What is the biggest challenge you’re expecting in the next four years?
WATSON: Professionally, my biggest challenge will be to counter the erasure of the continuing effects of discrimination in our society. Discrimination doesn’t cease to exist because President Trump won’t acknowledge it. We must use our legal tools to establish the need for continued consideration of race and other protected categories where necessary to ensure opportunity and access for all.
ACLU: What do you wish people knew more about the fight for racial justice?
WATSON: People believe that racial justice work only benefits BIPOC people, but it’s for everyone. We all benefit from a diverse society where everyone has opportunity.
ACLU: What is one thing you wish you knew about the fight for racial justice?
WATSON: I wish I knew more ways of affirmatively reclaiming the terms race and racism. We’re seeing both those words being demonised and made toxic in ways that aren’t true.
