In that case, you could just say "So-and-so worked here since X date, and they were fired on Y date" and answer the real question. The value to "would you re-hire" is that it is vague, there could be other perfectly good justifications than "they were fired." But now we see people using the latter question as a 1-for-1 replacement for the former. So I expect eventually HR will decide it's too risky to let a civil jury decide if wink-wink is good enough.