Pflugerville Contractor Sues Texas For Required Pro-Israel Pledge
PFLUGERVILLE, TEXAS — A speech pathologist who has long worked as a contractor for the Pflugerville school district has sued Texas after being fired for not offering unqualified support for Israel in accordance to a law signed by the governor that demands a pledge never to boycott the Middle East country.
Joined by attorneys and officials from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) at a Monday press conference in Austin, Bahia Amawi detailed her move in suing the Pflugerville school district and Attorney General Ken Paxton, saying the law violates her First Amendment rights. Gov. Greg Abbott signed a law in May 2017 prohibiting state agencies to contract with companies that boycott Israel. When Amawi — a pathologist for the Pflugerville ISD for nine years and the school district’s only Arabic-speaking pathologist — refused to sign a pledge never to boycott Israel, she was fired.
Amawi said she lost her job in August after refusing to sign the pledge in accordance to the pro-Israel law championed by Abbott. Before her firing, she worked with disabled, autistic and speech-impaired elementary school students in Pflugerville, according to (CAIR).
“This lawsuit is about an American woman’s right to protest in the way that she wants to,” her attorney said at a press conference announcing the lawsuit.
Related story: Texas Governor Signs Law Banning State Business With Companies Boycotting Israel
Amawi described her role at the school district, noting that this year an addendum was added to her annual contract effectively demanding full support of Israel. The addendum was added under the compliance part of the contract agreement, Amawi said, along with boilerplate sections such as the Equal Opportunity Employment Commission disclaimers, background and history requirements.
“When I saw that, it was a total shock to me,” Amawi said of seeing the addendum to her longstanding contract. “I didn’t understand how my position as a speech therapist helping kids with their speech and communication has to do with any economic harm with Israel. I didn’t see a connection at all. I was appalled at the fact that mt my government is restrict me from boycotting a certain entity. I felt that my rights were taken away.”
Amawi said the most frightening aspect of the addendum was the inference that she would be held liable if purchasing certain products made by manufacturers not offering full and unqualified support for the state of Israel.
“This is an attack on all of our civil liberties,” she said. “It is against freedom of speech. It is against our right to protest, and against the Constitution.”
CAIR attorney John Floyd painted the anti-boycott law as nothing more than an ideologically guided political stunt by conservatives to curry favor with their base. But its construct runs afoul of Constitutional safeguards inserted by the Founding Fathers.
“These waivers are finding themselves into contracts all over the state,” he said. “It’s not just teachers. It’s everything from the people who are working on our streets, who are taking care of our children, people who are contracting in many different sorts of businesses that provide services or goods to the State of Texas. It is an obvious attempt to suppress freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom to protest. This particular statute was obviously intended to gain cheap political points at the expense of our First Amendment right to protest, and it cannot stand.”
Reacting to the lawsuit, Abbott remained defiant in a tweet with a television station’s report on the lawsuit: “Texas stands with Israel. Period.”
With considerable fanfare, the governor signed the law effectively making boycotts of Israel illegal in Texas among contractors doing business with public entities.
Abbott signs anti-boycottt measure into law in 2017. Photo via the governor’s office.
As detailed at the press conference, the law has posed insurmountable obstacles for contractors. In the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in 2017, officials at the Houston suburb named Dickinson required relief grant applicants to sign a similar provision added to their contracts. The law also has had unintended consequences, such as an case in Houston where a university administrator resigned after forging a signature of a speaker who refused to sign a contract because it contained the anti-boycott clause.
Texas is one of 26 states led by conservatives who have crafted laws demanding unqualified support of Israel among state contractors as a condition of employment. In their various iterations, the laws aver full support of Israel as criticism of the country’s treatment of Palestinians comes into greater focus.
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