The Franklin-McKinley School District board’s 4-1 vote on September 22 formally rebuked Trustee Marc Cooper over remarks about Muslims and the Sept. 11 attacks. The resolution reaffirmed the board’s commitment to diversity and nondiscrimination, but it did not remove Cooper from office. Cooper cast the dissenting vote, San José Spotlight reported.
A rebuke, not removal
Under the legal explanation cited by ED100, local elected boards cannot remove an elected trustee through censure; a resolution can instead publicly express disapproval. The vote therefore states the board’s position without changing Cooper’s elected status. He was first elected in 2022 and is running for reelection in November 2026, according to Ballotpedia.
The board’s action followed remarks Cooper made during a September 8 meeting. According to San José Spotlight, he described the Sept. 11 attackers as “cowardly, radical Muslims,” presented board members with Bible literature and a list of people killed in the attacks, and claimed that the U.S. Supreme Court had ruled three times that America is a Christian nation. No such Supreme Court ruling exists. The phrase often invoked in support of that claim appears in Justice David Josiah Brewer’s 1892 opinion in Church of the Holy Trinity v. United States; it was not a ruling establishing a national religion.
The board had sent a letter to the school community on September 11 distancing itself from Cooper’s comments and saying they did not represent the district’s position, San José Spotlight reported. Cooper said he did not hate Muslims and characterized the attackers as a small group of radical Islamic terrorists. The board’s resolution followed that public dispute; it is a statement of institutional disapproval, not a finding that Cooper can be removed from office.
Statewide figures provide context, not a connection
California’s broader climate offers limited context for a dispute involving anti-Muslim remarks. The California Department of Justice reported 38 anti-Islamic bias events statewide in 2025, compared with 24 in 2024. The department cautioned that not all agencies submitted a full year of data for 2025, so comparisons require care. Those statewide figures do not establish any connection to Cooper’s remarks or the Franklin-McKinley board vote.
This was not the board’s first formal rebuke of Cooper: San José Spotlight reported that it voted 4-1 to censure him in September 2023 after he appeared on promotional fliers for a meeting organized by Informed Parents of Silicon Valley. That earlier episode and the current vote are separate disputes; neither, by itself, establishes a broader trend among school boards.
