Shayma Alzubi, the Muslim educator reassigned from her role as Western Hills High School principal after online backlash over past social media posts, says Fort Worth ISD offered her a $130,000 district-level job days before telling families she had been promoted.
Alzubi said she did not accept the position. Now, she is asking a federal judge to return her to the Western Hills job before the school year begins.
Alzubi filed a new version of her lawsuit July 9 in federal court after the first version was thrown out because her legal team did not include a local attorney, as court rules require. The new filing adds details about the district-level job offer, a family email announcing an interim principal and Alzubi’s request for immediate court intervention.
The new complaint adds Fort Worth attorney Jason C.N. Smith as local counsel. Alzubi also filed a motion for a preliminary injunction, asking Chief U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor to immediately reinstate her as Western Hills principal for the 2026-27 school year.
On July 9, O’Connor ordered Alzubi’s attorneys to notify Fort Worth ISD of the pending motion and all filings in the case. He also directed both sides to confer and provide the court with an agreed briefing schedule.
The injunction request gives the case a tighter timeline. Fort Worth ISD students return to school Aug. 10.
Fort Worth ISD spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Alzubi’s lawsuit again alleges FWISD violated her First Amendment guarantee of free speech and 14th Amendment equal protection rights by reassigning her after she made social media posts about Palestinians, Black Lives Matter, Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, Islam and the district’s COVID-19 mask policy that received online backlash.
The district previously said it was reviewing whether Alzubi’s posts aligned with its social media policy and expectations for staff.
Alzubi’s new filing adds details about what happened after FWISD announced May 22 that she would become principal of Western Hills High School.
The complaint says Alzubi signed a compensation quote request May 19 for the principal position, which listed an annual salary of $120,849.06. She alleges district officials vetted her social media before she was offered the job.
Four days after the district’s public announcement, Alzubi received a call from Dorene Benavidez, a FWISD lead executive director, about the online backlash, according to the complaint.
Benavidez told Alzubi to lock down her social media accounts but said the district had already reviewed them, the lawsuit states. Benavidez also said Alzubi’s repost of a definition of sharia law was “literally just a definition,” according to Alzubi’s declaration.
Later that day, Alzubi was told she was being temporarily reassigned to the Department of Performance Management and School Choice, according to the lawsuit.
The filing says Alzubi has since missed work tied to the Western Hills job, including a transition meeting with the former principal, new principal onboarding, leadership summits, hiring fairs and work on the campus master schedule.
On June 17, Alzubi met with FWISD as part of the district’s investigation and was questioned for about two hours about four social media posts, according to her declaration.
Those included a four-picture collage Alzubi said she did not make, a photo with a Black Lives Matter filter, a post supporting FWISD’s mask policy and a repost defining sharia law, the filing states. The collage included photos with Palestinian flag and DACA-support filters, according to the declaration.
Alzubi alleges the posts were made on her personal social media accounts, on personal devices and outside business hours. Her accounts did not identify her as a representative of FWISD, according to the declaration.
FWISD’s employee handbook says employees are responsible for their public conduct even when they are not acting as district employees. The handbook says an employee may face discipline if electronic media use interferes with the employee’s ability to perform their job duties.
“Until now, my social media activity has never been an issue in the workplace, neither with students nor with staff or faculty,” Alzubi wrote.
The new filing also says FWISD offered Alzubi a different job July 6.
Alzubi’s declaration says Chief of Staff Louis Kushner and Daniel Soliz, FWISD’s deputy superintendent and chief of schools, offered her a Principal Program Administrator position that would begin July 13 and pay $130,000. Alzubi said she did not accept the position.
“I applied for the position of Principal and that is the job I was hired to do,” Alzubi wrote. “That is the job I have worked for and so that is the job I want.”
Two days later, on July 8, FWISD emailed Western Hills families and staff that Alzubi had been promoted to the district-level administrative leadership position that she did not accept and that Lucio Rodriguez would serve as interim principal for the 2026-27 school year, according to the declaration.
Alzubi said she has not received an investigation results notice stating whether she violated any district social media policies.
FWISD board of managers President Pete Geren said personnel matters within the district are controlled by the superintendent, not the board of managers.
“The board has not been involved in any of the decisions or proceedings involving Ms. Alzubi,” Geren said.
Litigation is different, Geren said. The board has a role in legal matters, and attorneys will advise members to ensure they fulfill their responsibilities, he said.
Geren said the board had no role in Alzubi’s reassignment, the investigation or the decision to name an interim principal at Western Hills.
The lawsuit asks the court to reinstate Alzubi as principal, award damages and require FWISD to pay attorney fees and litigation costs.
The case is the latest development in a decision that drew religious leaders, educators and parents to defend Alzubi after her reassignment. At a May 28 news conference, supporters described FWISD’s decision as an “anti-Muslim witch hunt.” At a June 1 school board meeting, parents and community members urged the district to reverse course.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a national Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, is representing Alzubi in the lawsuit. In November, Gov. Greg Abbott designated CAIR a “foreign terrorist organization” and “transnational criminal organization” under Texas law, allegations the group has denied and challenged in federal court.
Public school employees have First Amendment rights when they speak as private citizens on matters of public concern, but those protections are not unlimited, law professors previously told the Fort Worth Report. Courts generally weigh those rights against a school district’s interest in preventing disruption to its operations, students or campus community.
That balance has surfaced before in Fort Worth ISD. In 2019, the district fired longtime teacher Georgia Clark after she tweeted to President Donald Trump that her school had been “taken over by illegal students” and urged him to intervene. A Texas Education Agency hearing examiner later found Clark’s tweets were constitutionally protected, but a Travis County district court upheld FWISD’s decision to terminate her.
Law professors previously told the Report those cases often turn on whether the speech caused a real disruption — not merely whether it was unpopular or drew public criticism.
Alzubi’s attorneys argue FWISD cannot rely on online hostility to justify removing her from the Western Hills job.
“The District took away Plaintiff’s principal job because of the hostile reaction online of people who object to Plaintiff’s views on her faith, national origin, and politics,” the injunction motion states.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
Disclosure: FWISD manager Pete Geren leads the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, a financial supporter of the Fort Worth Report. FWISD manager Laurie George is a member of the Report’s reader advisory council. News decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
This article first appeared on Fort Worth Report and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
