The High Court of Justice on Wednesday issued a conditional ruling ordering the state to explain why a November 2024 law authorizing the Education Ministry to fire teachers who publicly express support for an act of terrorism should not be repealed.

The ruling, in response to petitions by a group of teachers and the Arab Higher Monitoring Committee, gave the government until the end of April to defend the legislation, whose passage drew condemnation from human rights advocates.

The petitioners argued that the law violates the right to due process and grants “exclusive powers of investigation, examination, trial and punishment to political entities.”

Co-sponsored by MKs Zvika Fogel (Otzma Yehudit) and Amit Halevi (Likud), the law grants the director general of the Education Ministry the authority to fire, without prior notice, teachers who have either been convicted of a security or terror offense or have “published a direct call to carry out an act of terrorism or published words of praise, sympathy or encouragement for an act of terrorism [or] support for or identification with it.”

It also allows the ministry to cut or reduce funding for schools in which such expressions have been found, if it has been determined that “the management of the educational........

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