A former Toronto teacher who alleges she was fired after sharing pro-Palestinian content during her math class and on social media is filing a wrongful termination lawsuit. As first reported by the Toronto Star — and according to a lawsuit filed recently in Superior Court — Cassandra Della Mora previously worked as an educator at Greenwood College School, an independent co-ed school for Grades 7-12 in midtown Toronto.

According to the claim, she taught at the school for nine years before being terminated in June of this year without cause, after playing a short social media clip about the Israel–Hamas war to her Grade 8 math class. The claim states that, in November 2023, her students were discussing the recent global boycott of Starbucks (at the time, there were calls to boycott the coffee chain due to reports that it was sending part of its profits to the Israeli military). To provide a “balanced viewpoint” of the discussion, the 33-year-old played a clip of a Jewish woman explaining her thoughts on the topic.

Shortly after the incident, the school’s administrators reportedly expressed concern about Mora’s actions, so she apologized to her students. The claim states that Mora acknowledged that a math class wasn’t the most appropriate forum for geopolitical lessons.

In May of this year, Mora reportedly met with administrators again after reposting part of an Instagram post expressing her pro-Palestinian beliefs to her Instagram story.

The infographic, which was part of a slideshow, bore the heading “Palestine is not a single issue, Palestine is – the – issue” and featured an intertwined diagram of circles with phrases like “racism”, “patriarchy”, “capitalism”, “misogyny”, “settler colonialism”, and “environmental terrorism”.

The slide was from a popular account called “decolonizemyself”, which has over half a million followers, and describes itself as a page that explores decolonization, current events, healing, and culture.  After this reposting, the Toronto teacher claims she was bullied by a colleague and falsely accused of sharing antisemitic content. She says she apologized to the colleague but was met with an aggressive response.

On May 30, one day after Mora shared the post, the suit claims that school administrators emailed staff about their expectations for staff posting about the Israel-Hamas conflict on social media; the email also reportedly contained information about the rise of antisemitism in the community.

Mora met with administrators the following day, where she apologized and iterated that she only reposted part of the post, not the entire slideshow. She brought up the exchange she had with her colleague and was reportedly told to report the issue to Human Resources. A few days later, on June 5, Mora said she was fired during a meeting, which “blindsided” her.

The suit claims that Mora’s termination was “motivated by reasons relating to the internal political machinations” of the school’s leadership and “malicious in nature”.  It also claims that Mora’s firing was meant to either punish her pro-Palestine views or get rid of faculty who sympathized with the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and, so, she’s claiming aggravated, exemplary, and punitive damages

The allegations have not yet been proven in court, but the incident has generated a debate online about where to draw the line regarding free speech. Some believe that Mora’s political views should have been left out of the workplace/classroom.

No need to indoctrinate kids who came to school for academics.

— A.D.A (@wordsandmotions) September 13, 2024

But the Toronto teacher also has supporters. One Reddit user stated that labour laws would still apply to this case. “It’ll be interesting to see the details of this case emerge. If there’s a history of this behaviour with multiple warnings I think the termination could be justified. But if it’s a one time thing I would think a case could be made for wrongful termination.”

Another Reddit user discussed how strict teachers’ contracts are.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if hers had a clause specifically prohibiting airing political views in class. I don’t know if one violation of that clause would be considered cause for termination in Ontario, but if such a clause does exist, the teacher won’t be able to argue that she didn’t know she was doing something prohibited.”