A speech pathologist is challenging Texas’ law cracking down on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), arguing that it’s a violation of her First Amendment rights.
The pathologist, Bahia Amawi, refused to sign a pledge from her employer, Pfugerville Independent School District in Austin, that she said would have required her to “not boycott Israel during the term of the contract.”
“I was shocked because I didn’t know what my position as a speech therapist helping kids improve their language in an elementary school had to do with economic harm to Israel and why the government was trying to be involved in restricting me in boycotting a certain entity,” Amawi told the Dallas Observer. “I felt like my rights were taken away and that I had no choice in what products I could purchase.”
Amawi also told The Intercept that she couldn’t sign the pledge because she would “be betraying Palestinians suffering under an occupation that I believe is unjust.”
The school district requires all employees to sign the contract under Texas’ anti-BDS law, which bars the state from contracting with entities that engage in boycotts of Israel. It was signed into law in May 2017.
Amawi has called the law “a violation of my civil liberties and really everyone’s who is an American citizen.”
However, George Mason University School of Law Professor David Bernstein has argued in Reason that the law does not violate the First Amendment.
“The school district certification applies to the business, ‘it,’ not the individual ‘she,’” Bernstein wrote. “Contrary to what I’ve been reading all over the internet, Ms. Amawi is not being asked to pledge that she, in her personal capacity, will not privately boycott Israel, much less that, e.g., she will not advocate for boycotting Israel or otherwise refrain from criticizing Israel.”
Bernstein explained that this means that Amawi simply can’t take any action in a business capacity that would result in a boycott of Israel as an employee of the district, but she is free to engage in such boycotts on her own time.
“Supreme Court precedent, mostly to my chagrin, seems rather clear that this is constitutional, and that the protected class in question need not be an individual or minority group — in Rumsfeld v. FAIR, the Court held that the law school plaintiffs had no First Amendment right to boycott military recruiters in the face of a federal statute barring recipients of federal funds from discriminating against those recruiters,” Bernstein wrote.
Bernstein added that because of this, the lawsuit “will almost certainly lose.”
“It’s nearly impossible to think of a way in which Ms. Amawi’s speech pathology business would ever have an opportunity to in any way boycott or otherwise economically harm Israel, rendering this pure political theater,” Bernstein wrote.
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