Texas Jewish student kicked off robotics team for anti-Semitic joke

Anderson High School, Austin, Texas. Image by wikicommons
(JTA) — A Jewish student in Texas was kicked off his high school’s robotics team after he made an anti-Semitic joke at his own expense.
The student filed a federal lawsuit against Anderson High School in Austin, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
According to the lawsuit, the student found some coins on the floor of the robotics lab in November 2018. “Guess I’ll pick them up since I’m the Jew,” the student said. His comments were reported to the team coach.
The student was kicked off the team several months later after it qualified for the world championship competition, according to the lawsuit, which does not name the student.
The team coach also refused to give the student a letter of recommendation, but did write a letter to the national robotics organization “attempting to blackball (the student) from robotics competitions forever,” the newspaper reported.
The lawsuit contends that the student “was singled out for making a self-deprecating joke about Jewish culture, while other students using offensive language about race, or sexual orientation or disability are not.”
The post Texas Jewish high school student kicked off robotics team for anti-Semitic joke appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
2X match on all Passover gifts!
Most Popular
- 1
News A Jewish Republican and Muslim Democrat are suddenly in a tight race for a special seat in Congress
- 2
Film & TV What Gal Gadot has said about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
- 3
Fast Forward The NCAA men’s Final Four has 3 Jewish coaches
- 4
Culture How two Jewish names — Kohen and Mira — are dividing red and blue states
In Case You Missed It
-
Fast Forward Trump administration freezes research funding to Princeton amid antisemitism investigations
-
Fast Forward ‘Another Jewish warrior’: Fine wins special election for U.S. House seat
-
Fast Forward A Chicagoan wanted to protest Elon Musk — and put a swastika sticker on a Jewish man’s Tesla
-
Fast Forward NY attorney general orders car wash to stop ripping off Jews with antisemitic ‘Passover special’
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.