What/where is the "particular legal clause? This article veers from there into a personal biography. Is it part of his contract, a local bylaw? What's the legality or legal history of such actions?
Sigh. So much journalism is just tweet + fluff.
For example a similar law in a different state was found unconstitutional by a Circuit Court:
> The US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas heard the case involving Act 710, a statute that forbids state parties from establishing contractual agreements with companies that boycott Israel.
> The Court ultimately concludes that supporting boycotts of Israel is protected under the Constitution and that Act 710 violates First Amendment rights.
https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/digest/eighth-circuit-state-law...
But these kind of laws are controversial and different courts have come to other conclusions.
It's a long article, but it's mostly an article about the person. Almost no information about the actual issue at hand. Where is the journalistic curiosity. How does the clause work? How many contracts is it in? Are there other boilerplate clauses that work like this? What about other states? What about other lawsuits. I assume a lone Houston businessman isn't the only affected party taking legal action.
It's terrible that reading articles on a topic doesn't actually inform you about it.
There has been a lot of legal analysis about this topic too. Most believe that these anti-boycott laws are unconstitutional and will (eventually) be struck down by the Supreme Court. But it may take years or decades before a final decision is made.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/07/four-ti...
This alleged contract clause seems a lot like the sorts of nebulous "we reserve the right to back out without penalty if you do something not befitting our brand image" clauses you get when providing services for prestigious institutions but with a more government style legalese applied to it. Basically Houston doesn't want to potentially deal with the blow-back of a contractor is taking a particular stance on a particular political issue. It would be unsurprising if cities like Boston have similar clauses barring contractors from expressing strong anti-lgbtq or anti public employee union political sentiments. At the end of the day none of this really matters. The city will a ways terminate a relationship with a contractor if they cause political problems. The contract clause just makes the inevitable lawsuit slightly more uphill. Houston probably doesn't really care for the state's law on this issue so odds are they will likely never try and enforce these specific terms anyway.
https://capitol.texas.gov/tlodocs/85R/billtext/html/HB00089I...
The realpolitik move here is for Hassouna to include the clause so the bureaucrat evaluating his submission can check the box without sticking their neck out and then do what he damn well pleases. The state isn't gonna take him to court for the same reason the states you cheer-lead for only ever use their gun laws to secure better plea deals and never actually prosecute them in court.
It's quite clear that's not the case.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-BDS_laws#Constitutional_c...
What part of "the Court held that "content based laws...are presumptive unconstitutional" was unclear?
That's what caused Texas to turn around and revise the law saying it needs to be in contract boilerplate. And every city rolls their eyes and says "ok, whatever mom" and implements it. What do you think the odds that Houston a) wants to enforce the terms b) will actually decide to try and enforce the terms are.
Even unenforced laws can have a chilling effect, as well.
Chilling is the whole point of this law. He's presumably not an idiot and he figured that out as soon as he knew about the change. If he thought suing the state would actually jeopardize his income (suing the state creates a massive conflict of interest his government clients could easily use to justify cutting ties) he almost certainly wouldn't be doing it. In reality he knows how the people he does business with lean and knows they won't care or will think well of his lawsuit.