The intense reaction to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk has prompted a wave of scrutiny of teachers’ online comments in several states and school districts, and new debates about their free speech rights outside the classroom.
At least 10 teachers and other school employees have been fired, resigned, or otherwise left because of comments related to Kirk’s death, according to an Education Week analysis of local news reports.
Kirk was one of the highest-profile conservative personalities and a trusted ally of President Donald Trump. He built a vast political network and garnered millions of followers online, in part by touring college campuses across the United States to debate on issues such as immigration, gun control, race, and more, and posting videos of the debates.
Critics pointed to Kirk’s history of making derogatory comments about minorities and other groups.
Education Week’s review found that at least 50 additional teachers and other school employees have been investigated for comments deemed inappropriate, either for criticizing Kirk or seeming to approve of or justify his killing. (There are an estimated 3.8 million full- and part-time public school teachers in the U.S., according to federal data.)
Most of those under investigation have been put on leave pending review. Nearly all of those who have already lost their positions have been educators.
Some of the fired teachers have already sued for wrongful termination. Matthew Kogol, a former art teacher in the Oskaloosa, Iowa, community school district, and Lauren Vaughn, a former teaching assistant in the Spartanburg County, S.C., School District 5, are each arguing in federal court that terminations based on private Facebook posts on Sept. 10, in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s killing, violate their First Amendment free speech rights.
While public school teachers have long-standing constitutional protections for private, political speech, school districts also have the right to censure them for speech that disrupts their work as teachers.
As social media ramps up both how far private speech can be disseminated and the intensity of blowback to speech considered offensive, teachers’ traditional free speech protections and professional conduct standards are on the line.
In its updated Model Code of Ethics for Educators, the National Association of State Directors of Teacher Education and Certification warns teachers to be thoughtful about how they conduct themselves online, even if their postings aren’t connected to their jobs.
The association sets guidelines for both teachers’ professional and personal activity, and says educators must “exercis[e] vigilance in maintaining separate and professional virtual profiles and keeping personal and professional lives distinct.”
And even outside of school, the ethics code warns educators to “consider the ramifications of using social media and direct communication via technology with one’s interactions with students, colleagues, and the general public.”
“The professional educator knows that trust in the profession depends upon a level of professional responsibility,” the code states, “that may be higher than the minimal standard of policy and law.”
Vaughn posted a quote on Sept. 10 by Kirk saying the Second Amendment was worth the cost of some gun deaths each year. In a subsequent comment, she added, “[T]he WHOLE point here is that any time someone is killed fits [sic] a tragedy. Even someone I may not like. Even someone I disagree with. But instead of accepting it, why don’t we do something about it?”
The Spartanburg district fired Vaughn based on its social media guidelines, which say employees “must be respectful and professional in all communications (by word, image, or other means),” and “always represent the district in the best light.” Vaughn’s lawsuit argues the social media policy is “unconstitutionally overbroad, vague, and viewpoint-discriminatory.”
The courts have protected teachers’ First Amendment rights, with limits
Historically, K-12 public school teachers, like other public workers, retain First Amendment protections for private speech on matters of public concern, so long as it is not disruptive to the workplace.
“Americans are online,” said Zach Greenberg, a faculty legal defense attorney with FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. “They have X [accounts], they’re on Facebook, Instagram—these are very much the public forum for our society, and we expect people that are there to include those who work for the government, like teachers.”
But the power and reach of social media are complicating those protections. Online platforms “in our very connected world [allow] that commentary to travel back and cause disruption in the schools in a way that it might not have 50 or 60 years ago,” said Alex Morey, a First Amendment specialist for the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit group dedicated to education on free speech.
From the educators who have lost their positions, only four of the reported offensive comments allegedly came from teachers who were in a classroom or around students, according to Education Week’s review. The vast majority were connected to comments posted on social media or online, where combative and inflammatory posts get more engagement and are more likely to go viral.
In part, that’s because there are more deliberate campaigns to find and highlight potentially offensive comments. In the last week, social media campaigns—including those by @LibsofTikTok and @ScottPresler, both popular far-right social media accounts—urged users to specifically identify potentially offensive teachers’ posts and call for them to be fired.
In at least one case, the campaigns also called to dox and fire an Indiana superintendent for sending social media guidance to his staff.
The rapid-fire social media accusations have also led to significant mistakes.
The Elkhorn, Wis., school district was inundated with hundreds of messages and voicemails—many of them threatening or vulgar—after an elementary school administrator was incorrectly identified as making a social media post celebrating Kirk’s death.
“No one should celebrate another person’s murder,” said American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten in a statement. “But using this tragedy to encourage the doxxing, censorship, and firing of people for their opinions—including educators’ private opinions shared during their personal time—is wrong.”
In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear MacRae v. Mattos, an appeal by Massachusetts teacher Kari McRae, who was fired by the Hanover school district for TikTok videos McRae posted before the district hired her.
“Courts are, by and large, siding against teachers and with schools, and it does raise interesting questions about whether or not public school teachers for all practical purposes might have more limited First Amendment rights,” Morey said. “Can they express themselves on the issues that matter to them on their own time or by virtue of their public employment as a teacher? Do they have to really self-censor even when they’re not on the job? That is an existential question for America’s educators right now.”
What makes speech protected?
Under the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the government can make no law abridging the freedom of speech, and that right protects “a huge spectrum of political speech that includes speech a lot of people find hateful or offensive,” Morey said.
Exceptions tend to focus more on conduct than content; speech involving obscenity, true threats, fighting words, and incitement of violence isn’t protected. But those exceptions have longstanding, detailed legal definitions that often don’t match up to common wisdom. For example, while someone might consider an offensive post unprotected “fighting words,” the legal definition is very narrow and often restricted to face-to-face confrontations.
Similarly, something approaching a “true threat requires a serious expression of an intent to commit unlawful violence against a person or group,” Morey said—such as a school shooter announcing plans on social media.
“That’s not the same as someone saying that they think Charlie Kirk’s death is good,” Morey said.
For example, Kogol—the Iowa teacher—reacted to Kirk’s killing with the comment, “1 Nazi down,” which he argues in his lawsuit was “rhetorical hyperbole about a widely reported public event. It did not threaten any person, did not incite imminent unlawful action, and was not directed at any member of the school community.”
The district received calls from community members who were upset by the post within hours, according to KCCI, a television station in Des Moines, Iowa. The district told the station on Wednesday that it received over 1,200 phone calls.
In his suit, Kogol argues that public complaints about the content of his speech does not automatically render him less effective as a teacher.
In the last week, Morey said too many people— “particularly government actors who should know better"—are blurring the line of offensive versus unprotected speech, “suggesting that mere criticism or mere opinion crosses the line somehow into a true threat or incitement.”
State officials vow to target teacher licenses
Public outrage is also spurring punishments that go beyond professional censure or firing.
School chiefs or governors in at least 4 states—Florida, Oklahoma, Indiana, and Texas—have all vowed to revoke the licenses of teachers over controversial posts. It’s not yet clear how easily state leaders can follow through on these threats, but some teachers have had licenses revoked for speech outside the classroom.
“Teachers play a critical role in the shaping of our youth. As a result, we hold them to a higher standard,” said Indiana Republican Gov. Mike Braun in a Tweet. He said teachers’ licenses could be suspended or revoked for “terrible things” posted online after Kirk’s killing. “While we must protect the First Amendment, calls for political violence are not freedom of speech and should not be tolerated.”
Similarly, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath has asked superintendents to report teachers who have made inappropriate comments, and the agency will investigate more than 280 complaints it has received so far, with teachers at risk of losing their licenses.
The Texas American Federation of Texas, the state’s largest teachers’ union, called the move “a political witch hunt against educators” who disagreed with Kirk’s politics.
Some warn that there are broader, long-term consequences to clamping down on teachers’ online speech. The state efforts may lead teachers to withdraw from public life and be less comfortable leading classroom discussions of controversial issues.
“Schools are a microcosm of society, and teaching—as the largest college-educated civilian occupation— is often a focus of those seeking to change society,” said Lora Bartlett, chair of the education department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and co-author of Going the Distance: The Teaching Profession in a Post-COVID World.
“The government’s move to revoke state-issued teaching licenses in response to teachers’ personal opinions posted to social media—notably not in the classroom or in public school forums—is part of a movement to curtail the free speech of Americans.”
