California’s third-largest school district is on the hook for a racial hate crime hoax, and the details appear to get worse with each passing day.
The saga began in 2022, when Fresno Unified School Board Trustee Keshia Thomas claimed that teacher and legendary Bullard High School football coach, Don Arax, called her son the N-word at practice. Arax was forced out of his coaching position in the middle of his 24th season as a result (he was not technically fired, as he maintained his teaching position). As you could guess, Arax filed a defamation lawsuit. In a 2025 deposition, Thomas said that she never claimed Arax called her son the N-word (even though she did), and she has since issued a non-apology “apology” for accusing Arax of doing so (even though she said in a deposition that she did not).
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And, in case you think Thomas is truly sincere in apologizing for her attempt to destroy Arax’s life, she is currently running for a seat on Fresno’s city council while whining that the teachers union demanding she resign from her position is “irresponsible and distracting.”
The problem here for Fresno Unified is that the district went full steam ahead with Thomas’s accusation, fully willing to destroy Arax’s reputation based on nothing at all. Then-superintendent Bob Nelson admitted in his deposition that the district did not investigate Thomas’s claims and that “I didn’t contemplate potential implications on Mr. Arax’s reputation” if the accusations were false.
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As a result, the district has already spent nearly $370,000 defending itself and Thomas during the legal process. The district could be on the hook for millions more in a possible judgment, as Arax has thus far refused to reach a settlement. Fresno Unified, which is already in the midst of budget cuts as its student enrollment has decreased over the years, is only now considering cutting off funding for Thomas’s defense and is trying to assert that it is not liable for Thomas’s defamatory statements, despite having acted on them.
A politically ambitious race hustler essentially forced a man out of his job in a public spectacle, with the assistance of a compliant school district that never bothered to investigate the outrageous accusations. The school district helped drag Arax’s reputation through the mud and is now literally paying the price, a deserved consequence of helping perpetuate a hate crime hoax perpetrated by an ideologue who wants people to think racism is more prevalent than it is.