WASHINGTON – A wave of firings since conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s murder has brought a harsh reminder that workers’ free speech rights go only as far as their bosses allow.
TV commentators, airline workers, a nurse, police officers, teachers and others have faced suspensions or lost their jobs.
Top Trump administration officials and other Kirk allies have vowed to expose anyone who condones the killing and ensure they pay a price – though some people who have been fired insist they reject both the violence and Kirk’s views on race, gender norms and other hot button issues.
“When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out,” Vice President JD Vance said Monday while guest hosting The Charlie Kirk Show. “Call their employer. We don’t believe in political violence, but we do believe in civility. And there is no civility in the celebration of political assassination.”
Erin Coyle, a First Amendment expert at Arizona State University, said the firings conflict with “the philosophy of free expression” – but not with the constitutional right of free speech, which only protects against government interference.
“If a person working for a private corporation is fired based on what they posted because the corporation believes it reflects poorly on them, then there’s no government action there,” she said. “They don’t have First Amendment protection against their private employer’s actions.”
Kirk, 31, was shot and killed Sept. 10 while speaking at Utah Valley University. Prosecutors said Tuesday they will seek the death penalty for suspect Tyler Robinson, the 22-year-old who authorities say told his roommate and others that he was the shooter.
Kirk, who lived in Phoenix, co-founded Turning Point USA and built it into a widely influential conservative youth organization with chapters at hundreds of colleges.
President Donald Trump ordered flags to half-staff and vigils sprung up in Phoenix and on campuses around the country. But some people who were not fans went public in declaring their disapproval of his politics and rhetoric.
In Arizona, Gerald Bourguet was fired as an NBA reporter for Phoenix-based PHNX Sports after a series of posts refuting the outpouring of praise. He called Kirk a bigot who was “spewing hateful rhetoric on a daily basis.”
“Refusing to mourn a life devoted to that cause is not the same thing as celebrating gun violence,” Bourguet posted shortly before his firing.
Conservative influencer Laura Loomer and others have encouraged Kirk supporters to put a spotlight on anyone who they say celebrates the murder. Others have said they’ve collected tens of thousands of examples.
Many of those who have lost their jobs are in public-facing roles and made their comments in a very public way. MSNBC commentator Matthew Dowd was among the first.
But many are not public figures and had no megaphone or network audience when they vented their personal take on the late activist.
None of that makes a difference in terms of free speech rights and job security, according to First Amendment and labor law experts.
Employment contracts and labor law may offer protection, said Joseph Russomanno, a retired ASU media law professor. But in general, he said, “Employers can decide who they do and do not want working for them.”
He and other legal experts emphasized that the First Amendment – guaranteeing freedom of speech – protects against government interference, not punitive action by a private employer.
MSNBC fired Dowd after he said on air – shortly after the shooting – that Kirk’s rhetoric had contributed to an atmosphere of hate.
“I always go back to, hateful thoughts lead to hateful words, which then lead to hateful actions,” he said. “And I think that is the environment we are in.”
The network called his remarks “inappropriate, insensitive and unacceptable.” Dowd posted a public apology for his tone, emphasizing that “I in no way intended for my comments to blame Kirk for this horrendous attack.”
Russomanno called the firing an act of “kowtowing” to political pressure, adding that Dowd’s comments struck him as “what many would see as a reasonable assessment” of Kirk’s stances and impact on the nation’s politics.
“We are seeing more organizations fearful of offending anyone, especially Trump and the MAGA universe,” Russomanno said. “This is a common strategy of authoritarians: silence critics, the media and institutions of education.”
Bourguet and others who have lost jobs say they weren’t celebrating Kirk’s death, or even arguing – as more than a few Kirk critics have – that he reaped what he sowed by spreading division and defending maximal gun rights.
Florida Atlantic University placed a professor on leave for sharing posts on X that described Kirk as “racist” and “transphobic.”
Those are views shared by many Democrats and other critics, based on a number of Kirk’s comments such as his suggestions that Black airline pilots and Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson are unqualified diversity hires, and that trans women are not women.
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah was fired after a post expressing pessimism that the Kirk assassination would lead to fewer shootings or less political violence, because “we live in a country that accepts white children being massacred by gun violence. Not just accepts, but worships violence.”
Attiah attributed her ouster to “speaking out against political violence, racial double standards, and America’s apathy toward guns.”
Middle State Tennessee University fired an assistant dean of students who had posted that she had “ZERO sympathy” following Kirk’s death. The firing came after Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., demanded the dean’s removal.
Sen. Ted Cruz, a Texas conservative and a Harvard-trained lawyer who clerked for the late Chief Justice William Rehnquist, defended the firings in the wake of Kirk’s murder.
The First Amendment, he said at a forum hosted by Politico, means that “you cannot be prosecuted for speech, even if it is evil and bigoted and wrong” but there is no protection against “naming and shaming.”
In sports, the Carolina Panthers fired a communications coordinator who posted a comment that alluded to Kirk’s view that the occasional shooting was an acceptable tradeoff to ensure broad Second Amendment gun rights.
“Why are y’all sad? Your man said it was worth it…” the former Panthers employee wrote.
Attorney General Pam Bondi said on a podcast Monday that an Office Depot worker in Michigan who refused to print flyers for a Kirk vigil could face federal charges. The worker was fired.
“Businesses cannot discriminate,” Bondi said. “If you want to go in and print posters with Charlie’s pictures on them for a vigil, you have to let them do that. We can prosecute you for that.”
Bondi also suggested an impending crackdown on hate speech – which Trump and others in his administration have defined primarily or entirely as leftist attacks. She quickly walked back the threat after a conservative uproar, posting on X that only incitement to violence is subject to prosecution, not hate speech per se.
Some of the cases that have come to light involved comments that weren’t widely shared and remain known only to a handful of people.
Clemson University said two employees were fired for posting “inappropriate social media content in response to the assassination.” The university has not provided details on the offending content. The Coast Guard has said it was investigating “inappropriate” posts, too, without providing any specifics.
The Virginia Department of Education is among the many employers that have warned that public expressions of approval over Kirk’s death could lead to disciplinary action. It cited no specific instances and none have surfaced.
“Celebrating or condoning political violence is unacceptable and has absolutely no place in Virginia’s public schools,” the agency said.
Jacob Mchangama, founder and executive director of the Future of Free Speech at Vanderbilt University, agreed that the First Amendment protects against government actions, not actions by a private employer.
But he said, the lines blur when government officials pressure private employers to punish employees whose views don’t conform to what they want.
“When the government encourages such actions and says that it will essentially go beyond the First Amendment to target people who it says are guilty of hate speech … then I think that is calculated to encourage people to not speak out on things,” Mchangama said.
The administration has applied such pressure.
When American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines said they suspended workers for posts about the shooting, Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy said the airlines hadn’t gone far enough.
“The next step should be to fire them,” he wrote on X.
A survey last year by the Freedom Forum found a declining share of Americans would ratify the First Amendment today, down from 63% in 2019 to 58% in 2024.
Russomanno sees people losing jobs “over what seem to be pretty innocuous or harmless statements.”
“A little fear can grow into more fear, spreading like a cancer until we are in a very dangerous situation. Arguably, that situation is already here,” he said. “People are becoming more afraid to express a point of view, or even to share a set of facts, because someone might take offense.”
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