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GELFAND”S WORLD - Today, on Labor Day, it is appropriate to point out just how hypocritical the City of Los Angeles can be about fair pay for assigned work. Specifically, the city insists that one group of people work without pay. If those people don't carry out their appointed tasks, they are subject to punishment. Who are the people of whom we speak? They are the city's neighborhood council board members. What is the assigned work? It is the requirement that we take hours of training in the city's chosen ideology. The assigned tasks involve watching online videos and -- if I understand correctly -- answering questions and affirming our agreement with the message.
In other words, the city thinks that it can force me to undergo ideological indoctrination in order to force me to conform to its preferred way of thinking, and to undergo those hours of indoctrination without pay. Not only is it unpaid work, it is a kind of work that should not be imposed on people.
(I want to explain here that it is not the ideology that I disagree with. It is the idea that the City of Los Angeles can try to force that ideology on me in any way, and in particular by forcing me to work without pay.)
Early in July, I sent a message to city government explaining that -- according to a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision along with other reasons -- I was choosing to opt out of the mandated training. I argue that this is my right under the law, and that any attempt by the city to punish me for this decision is illegal and unethical.
I am going to reprint that message here, so you can read it for yourself. It is a bit long, but that is partly because it involves several different reasons for opposing the city policy. At the end, I will add a couple of additional remarks.
My message to the city:
Carmen Chang
General Manager
Department of Neighborhood Empowerment, City of Los Angeles, California
Re: Opt out on training regarding LGBTQ and Implicit Bias and US Supreme Court Decision
Re: Ideological indoctrination
Dear General Manager Chang, and to whom it may concern:
The Los Angeles City Council passed an ordinance requiring that neighborhood council board members take training in LGBTQ and in something called Implicit Bias. As you are aware, I objected to those requirements and chose to opt out of the training. The United States Supreme Court has now decided in the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision that there is a right to opt out of such training. It is clear that the Mahmoud v. Taylor decision invalidates the entire ordinance under which neighborhood council training in LGBTQ is described.
As you are also undoubtedly aware, there are neighborhood council participants and board members other than me who have likewise chosen to opt out of this training. Their right to full participation on their boards, along with my own right, must be recognized. Any further attempt to restrict our rights, including the right to vote on board actions, is improper and illegal.
There is a point which bears discussion here. The intent on the part of the City of Los Angeles to mandate such involuntary training is the intent to engage in ideological indoctrination. Whether the doctrine be liberalism, conservatism, Protestantism, Catholicism, Satanism, or Atheism, the attempt on the part of the city to impose a religious or quasi-religious doctrine is as improper as it is old, in that the intent is to establish an element of religious thought, where the word "religious" is meant to encompass any overriding personal philosophy of conduct and belief, whether or not it includes belief in a supernatural being. This argument holds equally for both one's views on LGBTQ and on Implicit Bias. It should be pointed out that there are numerous religious groups in the Los Angeles area which have strongly contrasting views on LGBTQ lifestyles, just as there is at least one religion in the Los Angeles area which rejects the entire concept of psychiatry, which is itself central to any attempt to define, let alone diagnose and modify, implicit bias.
There is another important matter which must be raised in any such discussion. The ability of any government agency to impose its religious or ideological beliefs on its citizenry is also the ability of the next government or the one after that to impose an equal but opposite set of views. Would it be proper for an elected government to attempt to teach that racial segregation is required by God, or that Protestantism and Protestant prayers be taught in public schools to school children? I believe that the answer to both of these questions is No, even though it took decades of legal battles to overturn such doctrines during the 1950s and 1960s. The attempt by Los Angeles to impose its own ideology upon its citizens, even though I may personally agree with some part of that ideology, is as frightening as it is wrong, considering that any such attempt is automatically an attempt to justify the use of governmental authority to override one's personal philosophy, whether we refer to it as religion or by some other term.
More briefly, ""Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . " Notice that it is the first clause that is most often quoted, but the second clause is equally important in this particular discussion, because forced ideological indoctrination is an attempt by the government to curtail one's right to either accept or reject philosophical or religious doctrine. All U.S. citizens have the right defined in the second part of the statement, namely to engage in or refrain from religious thought and participation. Taking forced training in doctrines on Implicit Bias or LGBTQ violates this principle.
Importantly, the courts have held that in those rare instances where religious thought or observance are affected by some governmental function, there are strict limitations on what government may and may not do. Legal scholars will argue over whether some statute is appropriately "narrowly drawn," but it is clear that hours of forced observation of video training is a lot less narrow than, for example, presenting board members with a single paragraph explaining that discrimination on the basis of race, religion, or sexual preference is illegal and improper. You will please note that the City of Los Angeles already presents this concept in writing to neighborhood council board members through its neighborhood council code of conduct. This is not to say that the Code of Conduct should not be subject to scrutiny, but merely to point out that rules against discrimination are already stated clearly to neighborhood council board members without resorting to the extensive training requirements that DONE is currently attempting to enforce.
The United States Supreme Court in its decision in the case of Mahmoud v. Taylor has now defined the law in a clear and well defined way. It is not important whether the City of Los Angeles agrees that some particular subject is sufficiently religious to be considered subject to such limitations. Rather, as the Court ruled, private citizens can disagree with a government agency such as the elected School Board and have their rights upheld legally. The question comes down to personal thought and conscience. There are of course exceptions and balancing that is required. Our society does not allow murder based on religious precepts, otherwise referred to as "honor killing," but that sort of argument is not germane to the current discussion. We are referring here to peoples' rights to think their own thoughts and to be left alone in thinking those thoughts.
Might I also suggest that the Implicit Bias training requirement is wrong in so many ways that it would be a labor to enumerate them all. I opt out of these trainings, both according to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Mahmoud v. Taylor and also for numerous other reasons under the laws of California, the United States, and the City of Los Angeles. These include, among others the city's own Charter, the rights of citizens and workers under state law, the Constitution of the United States, and federal statutes regarding human experimentation.
One more point which seems to have escaped the authors of the legislation in question: It is clear and obvious that the imposition of Implicit Bias training constitutes an attempt to affect the subconscious or unconscious minds of those who take it. The evidence for this assertion exists in the explanations provided by the academics and commercial organizations which have invented, promulgated, and sold such training. As such, this training constitutes human experimentation. As additional evidence for this assertion, let me point out the language in the contract between the City of Los Angeles and the University of Southern California regarding the creation of the training program. The contract explicitly calls for quiz questions to be presented to those taking the training, with the announced intent of discovering how well the training is working. This is the smoking gun of all smoking guns in terms of demonstrating the intent to interfere with peoples' thoughts and for the experimenters, in this case the City of Los Angeles, to be able to discover how well its experimental manipulation is working.
I would like to remind you that human experimentation involves many requirements under federal and state law, and that among these are the requirements for informed consent, the right to opt out at any time, and where appropriate the requirement for review by an Institutional Review Board (IRB).
I opt out of the Implicit Bias training not only based on Mahmoud, but for several other reasons, one of them being the longstanding and well established rules regarding experimentation on humans.
I would like to close by suggesting that we need not squabble or fight over neighborhood council training. There is a much better, much more civilized approach which is available to all of us. I would like to begin by agreeing that many neighborhood council board members and their districts would benefit should appropriate education be made available. Where I tend to disagree is where the city government and its agencies try to make such training a legal requirement. I would argue that this approach misses the point of what a neighborhood council is supposed to be according to the plain language of the City Charter. I would, in addition, argue that the background, education, political views, and even personality of each elected board member are to be decided by the voters of the neighborhood council district. Specifically, a neighborhood council board member is invited to communicate the views and opinions of the people of the district as one important element of the role of advising the government regarding the concerns of its residents. This means that the voters can pick a conservative or a liberal, a Christian or a Hindu or an Atheist, and who the voters may choose is no business of the City Council, the mayor, or of DONE. It follows that it is the decision of the voters, not of City Hall, as to what training shall be a requirement, or even a virtue, for any neighborhood council board candidate.
May I suggest that we hold a meeting in which we can discuss and attempt to negotiate a plan by which DONE will offer training, and our participating board members will be able to judge for themselves exactly which subjects they will most benefit by taking. It would be particularly beneficial to begin this process at the upcoming neighborhood council congress, but any other time would work.
Regards,
Robert Gelfand
Board member, Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council, multiple times in 2002-2025
Elected board member, Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council for 2025-2027
Final thoughts:
There are several different issues here. One is my objection to the city trying to waste my time over material that I already know and understand. It may be that the city can require some such training from its own paid employees, but I am neither an employee of the city nor paid by it. We could all benefit by having a polite negotiation between the city government and neighborhood council participants over the issue of training. My view is that there is lots of training that can and should be offered on a voluntary basis. I'm not sure that the city government even understands what sorts of training would be most useful. I am willing to help them.
Another issue is my objection to the city trying to indoctrinate me in an ideology. This is getting awfully close to what is directly prohibited in the First Amendment. I think the above message explains my views.
I would like to close by including a message from a city government staff member who was concluding an email exchange we were having. Basically, she was explaining that the city would continue to punish me (she carefully avoids using that word) in spite of the recent Supreme Court decision that is binding on the city. Here is that message:
"Hi Bob,
"I hope your week is going well. After discussing with DONE it is my understanding that you are unable to vote during the NC meetings which is why your name was not called, you can still however participate in discussion with the board during the meeting. The two trainings we spoke about are mandatory and set by LA City Ordinance 187803 amended Section 22.821 Article 3, Chapter 28, Division 22 of the Los Angeles Administrative Code which has made the Anti-Bias Training (ABLE) and Gender Expression and Gender Identity Training mandatory for all board and committee members.
"At this time I believe it is best to wait to hear back from the City Attorney's office before taking next steps.
"Thank you,"
So there you have it. The city claims the right to nullify the prevailing rule, in spite of two centuries of precedent and a Civil War that established the ranking of legal authority. There is a bit of waffling in this message, in that reference to waiting to hear from the City Attorney's office. Considering that the above message was sent almost two full months ago, this argument is a bit thin.
I should also point out that the above email message makes clear that the city not only has punished me for my actions, it promises to continue to do so. I would point out to the Deputy Mayor who oversees neighborhood councils (and who has never responded to my calls) this point: You might explain to your employees that it is unwise to send out an email that proves damages in any future lawsuit, leaving it to me and my colleagues merely to demonstrate liability, specifically that the Supreme Court decision overrides any contrary policy that the city wants to enforce.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
