Lawsuits reveal the free speech fallout following the death of Charlie Kirk : NPR

Vice President Vance hosts an episode of The Charlie Kirk Show at the White House on September 15, 2025, following the assassination of the series’ namesake.

Doug Mills/Pool/The New York Times via AP

hide caption

toggle caption

Doug Mills/Pool/The New York Times via AP

Five months after the killing of far-right activist Charlie Kirk, a wave of lawsuits reveals how Americans were investigated, fired and, in one case, arrested for their online reactions to his death.

The most dramatic case involves Larry Bushart, a retired police officer from Lexington, Tennessee. A self-described progressive and “keyboard warrior,” he posted memes mocking Republican officials’ mourning over Kirk. That’s when the local police showed up at his door.

“They were very vague. I don’t think they understood why they were there, but that it was a Facebook post,” Bushart recalls.

Local police had been sent there at the request of Sheriff Nick Weems of Perry County, Tennessee. He objected to a post quoting President Trump telling people to “get over” an Iowa school shooting two years ago — which Bushart said was meant to contrast with the call to memorialize Kirk. But the sheriff said it could be interpreted as a threat against his county’s high school, which shares the name of the school mentioned in the Trump meme.

“I knew I hadn’t threatened anyone and the conversation wasn’t even about the school or the local community,” Bushart says. “I was like, ‘No, we were having a conversation about Charlie Kirk and his death and your desire to have memorial services for him.'”

The sheriff had him arrested. Weems would not speak to NPR, but last fall he spoke to NewsChannel Five in Nashville. At the time, he criticized Bushart for refusing to delete the post.

“We sent the Lexington police to talk to him, and he refused to do it,” Weems said. “What kind of person does that? What kind of person says he doesn’t care, ‘I won’t take it off?'”

Bushart spent 37 days in jail because of that Facebook meme – unable to post $2 million bail. Faced with growing negative publicity, prosecutors dropped the charges against them. He is now filing a complaint, represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

“We forget, I think, sometimes that local government officials have extraordinary power to do things like throw you in jail or take away business licenses,” said FIRE attorney David Rubin. “Any time one of them thinks, ‘I’m going to punish someone for their speech,’ it’s a very big problem.”

Rubin says his organization is also aware of at least 13 lawsuits involving people who were fired for “Kirk-related speech.”

“Cancel culture is a really ugly thing that kind of comes from the baser instincts that we have as people,” Rubin says. “And that’s why it almost always feels like you’re trying to get people fired because your job is your livelihood.”

Last month, the American Federation of Teachers filed a lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency over the way its leaders asked superintendents to report teachers for “inappropriate content” they may have shared about Kirk. The agency has collected 354 complaints and 95 are still under investigation. The AFT says this process – which was approved on X by Texas Governor Greg Abbott – triggered a “wave of retaliation.”

Public comments from federal officials also played a role. While hosting Kirk’s podcast days after the shooting, Vice President Vance invoked what he called “civil society.”

“This is coming from all of us. So when you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out, and hell, call their employer,” Vance told listeners.

Jessica Levinson, a professor at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, sees echoes of 2020-era cancel culture in the wake of Kirk’s death.

“It’s the same general idea in the sense of ‘We want people to feel an impact, to feel a consequence of their statements,’” Levinson says.

But crucial legal differences emerged in 2025.

“When an elected official, especially an elected official with a lot of power like the vice president, calls for people to be fired as a result of their comments, the legal question is whether or not this amounts to government coercion. [of employers]”, she said.

Sometimes these official statements can backfire.

Last fall, an art professor at the University of South Dakota was fired for a post that called Kirk a “hate-spreading Nazi.” When South Dakota Governor Larry Rhoden publicly approved X’s firing, it may have saved the professor’s job.

“The governor’s statement made clear what I thought was obvious anyway: This was a simple attempt to punish this man for his lawful speech protected by the First Amendment,” said Jim Leach, the professor’s lawyer.

A federal court granted a temporary restraining order against the firing, and the university dropped the case.

“He was excited to get back into the classroom, where he wants to be,” Leach said.