WTF ?
"The sole political affirmation Texans like Amawi are required to sign in order to work with the school district’s children is one designed to protect not the United States or the children of Texas, but the economic interests of Israel."

Is this unconstitutional? Isn't protest/boycott protected under the 1st amendment?

I'm very strongly against the BDS movement, but what business is it of the school how teachers and staff spend there money outside of work? This makes no sense.

If a teacher was trying to work BDS into their class instruction I'd understand, but doesn't sound like the case, and hard to imagine a Speech Path having much opportunity for that either.

Maybe a a question to get less universal agreement; How does the relate to James Damore? He's 'that guy' that Google fired for his opinions on the gender gap and employment outcomes.

The easy out is to point his case is different because Google isn't a public school, but if you put that aside, are the two cases different anymore? Two people fired because they wouldn't be silent on their political beliefs?

Without wanting to re-litigate the Damore case, I feel like there's a subtle but crucial difference in those two cases.

AFAIK, Damore was fired because he actively did something; he wrote an internal memo to Google.

If Google had required him to sign something supporting gender diversity or whatever, that would be more comparable.

This Texas law is not about supporting Israel.

It is about punishing and firing Muslims.

I only ever took a cursory look at that whole case too, but didn't his memo stem out of internal meetings and training specifically with the purpose of discussing the gender gap/pay disparity? If your specifically asking for your employees opinions and holding discussions with them on political issues, the cases have more similarity.

Hmm, just looked up the case again and it looks like you’re right.

It’s probably still a dumb move, and it shows an astonishing lack of people skills (if someone asks for feedback and you’re going to be highly critical of not only them but the company, do it privately; don’t email the whole company), but he probably didn’t deserve to be fired.

Doesn’t change the facts of this case though.

Agreed,

The boundaries between freedom of speech, freedom of association and labor law just makes for a sticky problem, and one with enough sides that unfortunately people can rationalize one way for their political allies and another for their opponents.

When does the freedom of the employer to choose to disassociate themselves with speech and beliefs they deem intolerable cross the line into oppression of other's beliefs?

Yeah, it’s a tricky problem.

I while there are certainly cases where an employee can impact their employers business through their beliefs, statements or actions, in general I think the burden of proof should be on the employer.

And there’s certainly no way an employee should ever be made to sign something like this.

And for the record, it goes the other way too. If a “liberal” company fired someone for refusing to sign an anti trump thing, they’d be wrong too.

The social media mobs that take it on themselves to get 'bad' people fired and ideally unemployable make this problem more in our faces now too.

It even leaves me a bit skewed too. If someone kept on an employee that was in the KKK or a neo-nazi group, I'd then wonder about that person for NOT firing them. If the employee was a model employee and kept their beliefs quite though is that right? I see a lot of the SJW lynch mob firings and the only difference is I consider KKK membership bad enough, while the SJW crowd just picks a different political line...

The difference is whether they are punching up or down, or at least should be, even if local laws don't reflect it.

Does Israel need defending? Are trans people, gay people, etc, discriminated against routinely? Then it is arguable that it is the employer's duty to his workplace environment to rid themselves of forces hostile to gender and racial diversity.

So if the person above had been actively maligning Jews, for example, it would of course be a fireable offence, but requiring them to sign some sort of pro-Israeli document is demeaning, even if you are not particularly anti-Israel or anti-Judaism.

Texas....where your constitutional rights are sacrosanct....unless they impede the right wing platform/plans of the day.

Law struck down in Texas Federal court as unconstitutional:

https://theintercept.com/2019/04/26/in-case-brought-by-school-speech-pathologist-texas-federal-court-becomes-the-third-to-strike-down-pro-israel-oath-
as-unconstitutional/

(May have to fix that link by hand, seems there is a length limit.)