Dive Brief:
- A Georgia school district was sued Monday after it fired a veteran high school teacher because of her social media posts critical of recently assassinated politically conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Michelle Mickens, a former finalist for Georgia Teacher of the Year, posted a quote from Kirk on her personal, private Facebook account and made comments under the post on the danger of gun violence.
- The federal lawsuit, filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Georgia Association of Educators, claims the Oglethorpe County School System asked Mickens to remove her post, retract or apologize for the post, and/or stop using social media completely. However, the lawsuit claims, the district has no clear standards for employee social media use.
- Meanwhile, the lawsuit said the district allowed speech in school supporting Kirk, such as teachers participating in Kirk’s birthday celebrations on school campus by wearing t-shirts bearing texts and images in his memory. The district's decision to place Mickens on indefinite paid suspension, pending termination of her employment, as a result of her private social media post critical of Kirk violates her First Amendment right to free speech and the 14th Amendment, which ensures due process, according to the complaint.
Dive Insight:
In the wake of Kirk's assassination in September, educators at K-12 schools and at colleges were fired for their views about Kirk's messaging. The employees have begun challenging those decisions in federal court.
Last month, an Iowa art teacher filed a lawsuit against Oskaloosa Community School District after the school board voted to fire him for posting “1 Nazi down” in the aftermath of Kirk’s assassination.
A teacher assistant from South Carolina's Spartanburg County School District Five also filed a lawsuit last month after she was terminated for an off-duty Facebook post quoting and criticizing Kirk's views on gun control. The former Spartanburg County employee said the district's social media guidelines violated her constitutional rights. Those guidelines require employees "to be respectful and professional in all communications (by word, image, or other means),” regardless of setting, requiring them to “always represent the District in the best light.”
The teacher assistant's lawsuit claims that policy is "unconstitutionally overbroad, vague, and viewpoint-discriminatory, as they ban criticism but not praise" and "chill discussion of matters of public concern."
That lawsuit and the one filed in Georgia on Tuesday claim that the social media posts made by teachers while they were off-duty and on their personal social media posts did not lead to disruption to school operations.
In the Georgia case, Mickens posted a quote from Kirk saying: “‘I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights.’"
The post sparked a disagreement between Mickens and her peers on social media, in which Mickens called Kirk "a horrible person" and "a fascist full of hate for anyone who was different."
"While I’m sad that we live in a country where gun violence is an epidemic, the world is a bit safer without him," part of her comment said.
The personal post was screenshotted and shared publicly online, per the lawsuit, and eventually brought to the attention of school leaders. Prior to the incident, and in over her 20 years of teaching, Mickens had never received a formal complaint regarding her professional conduct or teaching performance, the lawsuit says.
“This case is about resisting the growing attempts to exert ideological control over public education,” said Michael Tafelski, interim deputy legal director for SPLC, in a statement Monday. “Ms. Mickens is being targeted not because she violated any policy or harmed students, but because her personal views — expressed outside of the classroom — don’t align with those in power. This unconstitutional censorship of protected speech endangers a healthy democracy."
Oglethorpe County School System did not respond to K-12 Dive’s request for comment in time for publication.
School districts and boards have been caught in waves of political controversies in recent years as growing grassroots conservative and parental rights movements have led to curriculum disagreements, pushback against school operations like COVID-19-era masking, use of bathroom facilities, and athletic participation.
With it have emerged a flurry of First Amendment lawsuits, including over social media posts related to the controversial issues.
In 2023, such a case reached the Supreme Court after parents claimed two southern California school board members violated their First Amendment rights by blocking them on personal social media accounts the board members used to communicate about job-related issues with the public. The school board members blocked the parents after they posted repeated comments to the board members' social media posts.
In that case, the high court decided in favor of the school board.
However, as First Amendment issues emerge, various education and technology organizations have recommended school districts adopt social media and technology use policies for students. With Kirk's shooting and other recent controversies like the Israel-Hamas war, such policies have also come into play for teachers.
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