Florida's new anti-Semitism law has a Tallahassee high school student excited for the upcoming school year.
Holocaust Week at Deerlake Middle School was an event Danielle Richards approached apprehensively of after she says her fellow classmates continuously made anti-Semitic comments. Now, with a new law in place that punishes such behavior in schools, the 16-year-old is hoping more Jewish students will be comfortable expressing themselves.
“A lot of Jewish people will look at Judaism not as just a religion but as an ethnicity as well," she says.
"I can’t change my Judaism and it’s something that I something that I care about deeply as a part of me, it’s not something that is just there, it’s something I actively choose to be a part of.”
The law penalizes anti-Semitic acts in Florida public schools and universitie. It also places anti-Semitism alongside racial disrimination. Governor Ron DeSantis signed off on the measure while in Israel.