Texas teacher fired after teaching students their constitutional rights

The unscrupulous attempts in states like Florida and Texas to fundamentally reform the education system by banning teachers from discussing topics like slavery or LGBTQ issues have been a source of nonstop shock and awe for years.

In most cases, all this is done under the guise of “protecting children” from corrupting influences (which, at first glance, is a ridiculous idea).

But the experiences of one Texas teacher in 2023 provide insight into the true motivations of some conservative educators and underscore how morally reprehensible and patently absurd the right-wing education reform movement really is.

The teacher was fired after educating students about their constitutional rights.

Former Austin, Texas teacher Sophia DeLoretto-Chudy rose to prominence in 2023 after exposing the actions of her school administration and the Austin Independent School District on TikTok.

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It all started when she was dragged into “a follow-up meeting” with an administrator who presented DeLoretto-Chudy with a document with a “list of concerns.” The most important of these was a passage that said, “We have noticed a deliberate attempt to teach your students their legal and constitutional rights.”

Using the word “intentionally” is a wild choice. If DeLoretto-Chudy had inadvertently taught children about the Constitution, which conservatives usually view with almost religious reverence, there would have been no problem. As it was, the rebuke understandably shocked DeLoretto-Chudy. But that “check-in meeting” was just the beginning.

DeLoretto-Chudy was accused of “indoctrinating” students by teaching them that they were not legally required to recite the Pledge of Allegiance.

The point of contention seemed to revolve around a particular lesson DeLoretto-Chudy taught her class: the fact that because of free speech and other supposedly “inalienable rights,” students are not required under the Constitution to take the Pledge of Allegiance, even though there is a state law in Texas that requires them to do so.

This began after her students asked about the origins of the Pledge of Allegiance. After diving into history together, they found out that it was invented in the 19th century and introduced into schools, supposedly to unite a post-Civil War country that was deeply divided over slavery.

When DeLoretto-Chudy later taught during Holocaust Remembrance Week about how Hitler targeted children with propaganda to spread his ideology, her students said they quickly recognized the connection to the Pledge of Allegiance and decided they no longer wanted to participate.

“My government does not believe that they will stay in office [in assemblies] for reasons they can fully articulate and fully understand,” DeLoretto-Chudy, “and is concerned that I am 'indoctrinating' my students.”

The idea that teaching basic historical facts and constitutional rights amounts to “indoctrination” should be shocking. But this is America, where things like Holocaust denial and other horrific concepts have ipso facto been written into education laws in states like Texas.

In 2021, Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Texas House Bill 3979 into law, which prohibits educators from discussing “controversial” topics unless they “examine such topics from diverse and competing perspectives without giving precedence to any one perspective.” A school district curriculum director called for the law to be applied to the Holocaust just weeks after the bill was signed.

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DeLoretto-Chudy was subsequently fired for exposing her school administration's actions on TikTok.

Three months after she posted her first TikTok about the uproar at her school, DeLoretto-Chudy was first placed on leave and then fired. She told Buzzfeed News that in statements sent home to parents, her school claimed her firing had nothing to do with her performance, but rather with “embarrassment[ing] my administrator in a TikTok.”

She said the statement sent to parents made it clear that none of the items on the “list of concerns” or any complaints from parents about the subjects she taught were the reason for her dismissal. “I was removed from teaching and heavily investigated because the TikTok went viral overnight,” she told Buzzfeed.

In a subsequent TikTok, DeLoretto-Chudy further explained, “It's literally just because I brought the truth to light on TikTok instead of filing a complaint through the appropriate channels.” She even offered to post an educational video written by the school district, but was denied.

Of course, getting fired for posting a TikTok about work is nothing new—pretty much any HR person would tell you that's a terrible idea. But it's hard not to suspect that this was simply a ploy to ensure DeLoretto-Chudy had no legal recourse after she was fired for teaching simple facts that the radical right-wing government of Texas—which has banned or restricted more books about LGBTQ or racial issues than any other state—deems too “widely debated or currently controversial,” to use the wording of the law.

This educational radicalism, which Republican politicians want to implement nationwide in their “Project 2025” plan for a second Trump administration, is having devastating consequences in Texas. Already facing a crippling teacher shortage, 77 percent of Texas teachers said in 2023 that they are considering leaving the profession.

DeLoretto-Chudy is one of them. She has since turned to advocacy instead, helping to run the nonprofit Texas Voter Project, which seeks to engage younger people in the voting process in hopes of changing the course of Texas.

The people who run Texas' schools may be too cowardly to stand up wholeheartedly for their vile, bigoted views when called to account by people like DeLoretto-Chudy, but they and many other Texans – including their students – are certainly willing to stand up for what they believe in. And if we keep our representative democracy in November, it surely won't be long before they stand up and turn the tables.

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John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human issues.