Excerpt:
A federal judge on Tuesday ruled against the founding principal of an Arabic-language school who sued the city, claiming that her rights were violated when she was fired in 2007 for defending the word "intifada" on a T-shirt.
The principal, Debbie Almontaser, had argued in her suit that the city violated her First Amendment rights when it fired her for explaining in a newspaper interview that the word had nonviolent origins. Judge Sidney H. Stein, who dismissed the case in Federal District Court in Manhattan, rejected her claims, saying that Ms. Almontaser made her statements in the course of her duties as an administrator — not "as a citizen on a matter of public concern" — and that employers have some rights to control their employees' words and actions.