First Amendment and Free Speech

NPR reports that five months after right‑wing activist Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Washington, a growing stack of lawsuits alleges that police, state agencies and employers across the country punished people for online reactions to his death. The most extreme case involves retired Tennessee officer Larry Bushart, who was jailed for 37 days on a $2 million bond after Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems deemed a Facebook meme about Trump and a past Iowa school shooting a threat to a local high school that shared the same name; prosecutors dropped the charges, and Bushart is now suing with backing from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. FIRE says it is tracking at least 13 lawsuits by people who say they were fired over "Kirk‑related" speech, while the American Federation of Teachers has sued the Texas Education Agency over a directive—boosted on X by Gov. Greg Abbott—that produced 354 complaints and 95 ongoing investigations into teachers’ posts about Kirk, which the union calls a "wave of retribution." Vice President JD Vance’s on‑air call days after the killing for listeners to "call" out and "call [the] employer" of anyone celebrating Kirk’s murder is cited as one catalyst for the complaints and firings. Legal scholars quoted in the piece say the cases echo earlier "cancel culture" battles but raise sharper constitutional questions because, unlike pure social backlash, many of the reprisals came from government officials with the power to arrest, investigate or strip people of their livelihoods.