Charlie Kirk was shot and killed on September 10, 2025, while speaking at a Turning Point USA event at Utah Valley University. He was 31. Before the conservative activist's body was cold, a wave of social media posts from left-leaning Americans mocked his death, and more than 600 of them lost their jobs for it. Now, a growing number of those fired workers are winning lawsuits and walking away with six-figure settlements, courtesy of the employers and government agencies that let them go.
The cases raise a question that ought to unsettle every American who believes in both decency and constitutional order: When someone celebrates a murder online and gets fired for it, who pays, and how much?
A Reuters investigation published in November 2025 documented more than 600 terminations tied to negative reactions to Kirk's killing. Many of those fired employees filed lawsuits claiming their employers violated their First Amendment rights. A string of those cases have now resulted in eye-watering payouts, and in at least one instance, full reinstatement to a tenured university position.
The social media posts varied in tone, but the thread was the same: glee, or something close to it, over the murder of a man whose politics the posters despised.
Brittney Brown, a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, posted from a parody account called @awhalefact on the day Kirk died. Her post read: "The whales are deeply saddened to learn of the shooting of Charlie Kirk, haha just kidding, they care exactly as much as Charlie Kirk cared about children being shot in their classrooms, which is to say, not at all."
Five days later, she was fired. The FWC said it "did not condone nor tolerate this type of hateful sentiment" and cited a "zero-tolerance policy towards the promotion of violence and hate." Brown's termination came hours after the account Libs of TikTok shared a screenshot of her post alongside her LinkedIn profile and suggested she be let go.
Brown filed a wrongful termination lawsuit, and the Daily Mail reported she was awarded $485,000 from the agency.
The most striking case belongs to Larry Bushart, a 61-year-old former police officer from Lexington, Tennessee. Bushart shared a meme under a Facebook post promoting a candlelight vigil for Kirk. The meme quoted President Donald Trump saying "We have to get over it", words Trump used the day after a January 2024 school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa, that killed a sixth-grader. Bushart added his own caption: "This seems relevant today..."
His lawsuit stated he did not create the meme or add its text. But local officials claimed residents believed Bushart was threatening violence against the similarly named Perry County High School in Texas, a different school entirely.
The Perry County Sheriff's Department sent a Lexington police officer to Bushart's home the next day. When Bushart refused to take the post down, he was arrested that night at the direction of a local official identified in the lawsuit as Weems. His bail was set at $2 million.
Bushart spent 37 days in jail. He missed his wedding anniversary. He missed the birth of his grandchild. He lost his job. Perry County, Texas, ultimately handed him an $850,000 settlement. The case stands as a cautionary tale, not just about online speech, but about the willingness of local authorities to jail a man over a Facebook post they misread.
In an era when prosecutors pursue maximum penalties for politically charged acts of violence, the question of where legitimate law enforcement ends and political overreach begins deserves honest scrutiny.
Higher education proved no safer ground for employers. Darren Michael, a tenured theater and dance professor at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, shared a Newsweek article headlined "Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths 'Unfortunately' Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment." Republican Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee then shared Michael's post and tagged the university, asking: "What do you say, Austin Peay State University?"
The school suspended Michael from his tenured position. He sued, and won. APSU paid him $500,000 and gave him his job back. In an email to the campus community, the university acknowledged that the process for terminating a tenured professor had not been followed at the time of Michael's firing.
That admission tells you everything. The school acted on political pressure, skipped its own procedures, and wound up writing a half-million-dollar check for the trouble.
Suzanne Swierc, a former health director at Ball State University, was fired after posting a lengthy statement that included the line: "If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can't be friends." Her post also said Kirk's death was "a reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed," though she added it did not excuse his killing. Ball State paid her $225,000.
Jana Aldrich, a special education teacher in Iowa, lost her position at the Child Saving Institute after sharing a 2023 Kirk quote about gun deaths being "worth" the cost to protect the Second Amendment. She captioned her personal Facebook post: "He was wrong... It's not worth it! I won't miss him!!!" Twelve members of the public contacted the organization and complained, Iowa Capital Dispatch reported. CSI fired Aldrich and then challenged her unemployment benefits claim. A judge ruled in her favor, awarding her an unspecified amount of benefits.
Joshua Bregy, a former assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering and Earth Science at Clemson University, reposted what was described as "a critique of Kirk's rhetoric" that "began with a condemnation of violence" on September 26, 2025. Clemson terminated him. Bregy later dropped his lawsuit and agreed to resign effective May 15, the end of his initial contract, while collecting his full salary and benefits in the interim. The South Carolina Daily Gazette reported his annual salary was $91,190.
Add up the confirmed figures: $485,000 for Brown, $850,000 for Bushart, $500,000 for Michael, $225,000 for Swierc, plus Bregy's salary and Aldrich's benefits. That is more than $2 million across just six cases, and Reuters documented over 600 firings. The final taxpayer and institutional tab, once all the lawsuits settle, could be enormous.
None of this means the posts were decent. Mocking a man's murder, any man's murder, within hours of his death is morally repugnant. Kirk was killed by a suspected gunman, Tyler Robinson, 23, while standing on a college campus doing what he did best: talking to young conservatives. The celebration of that act by hundreds of Americans revealed something rotten about the state of political discourse.
But the employers who fired these people acted in haste, often under public pressure, and frequently without following their own procedures. Government agencies like the FWC invoked "zero-tolerance" language. Universities bypassed tenure protections. A county in Texas jailed a retired cop for 37 days on $2 million bail over a misinterpreted meme. The result is a parade of settlements that reward the very people whose conduct most Americans would find repulsive.
The First Amendment protects ugly speech. That is not a new principle. Employers, especially public employers bound by constitutional constraints, know this, or should. When they fire someone in a spasm of outrage and then lose in court, it is the taxpayer or the tuition-paying family that foots the bill.
The pattern is clear enough. A conservative figure is attacked or killed. Left-leaning employees post something vile. The internet mob, or a prominent account, surfaces the post. The employer panics and fires the employee. The employee sues. The employer settles for a sum that dwarfs the employee's annual salary.
Everyone loses except the person who posted. The fired worker gets a windfall. The employer absorbs a financial hit. The taxpayer or student picks up the tab. And the broader culture learns that mocking a murder victim online can, in the end, be quite profitable, as long as you hire the right lawyer afterward.
Charlie Kirk deserved better than to have his death turned into a punchline. The people who mocked him deserved to face social consequences. But when government agencies and public universities cut corners to deliver those consequences, they hand their critics a winning hand, and a check to go with it.
The left celebrated a man's murder and got paid for it. That is not a First Amendment triumph. It is a failure of institutions too reckless to follow their own rules.