A former Eastern Florida State College employee is suing the school after she was fired for her social media posts about the assassination of political activist Charlie Kirk.
Erika Santos, who worked in accounting and grant compliance at Eastern Florida since 2019, was terminated in October. She filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida on Wednesday.
Santos, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, claims the Brevard County college retaliated against her for expressing her First Amendment right to free speech and discriminated against her for her political viewpoints.
“We all have the right to free speech, and you don’t lose that when you work for the government,” said Michelle Morton, an ACLU attorney.
The college did not fire employees in the past who posted strong political opinions online but then singled out Santos based on “her viewpoint,” the lawsuit says.
Kirk, 31, a confidant of President Donald Trump, was shot to death on a Utah college campus Sept. 10. A Christian father of two, he was the founder of Turning Point USA and demonstrated a combative new approach to conservatism that openly criticized racial justice movements, the news media and LGBTQ+ rights. Critics said his views perpetuated racist, anti-immigrant and anti-feminist ideas.
Santos’ Facebook posts indicated she disliked Kirk’s politics, court documents show. But, as other users disagreed with her, she also said she did not approve of his assassination. She also wrote that Kirk’s shooting had links to his rhetoric.
“I never said it SHOULD happen. I’m simply saying he’s not a hero or a martyr. He’s a victim. Period,” Santos wrote.
One of Santos’ Facebook posts highlighted a Kirk quote she found offensive — one in which the young father said that if his daughter were sexually assaulted and became pregnant at 10 years old, he would make sure the baby was delivered.
A spokesperson for Eastern Florida said the college does not comment on active lawsuits.
A campus security officer, Ricky Carswell, investigated Santos’ online posts, called them “disgraceful” and claimed they condoned Kirk’s assassination, according to his findings, which are now part of the court filings.
The lawsuit says Eastern Florida selectively disciplined Santos “based on her viewpoint while ignoring comparable conduct by others.”
It notes other instances of Eastern Florida employees posting about politics, but not being punished, including Carswell. The lawsuit includes a screenshot of a 2013 post from Carswell claiming then-President Barack Obama supported Al-Qaeda. He did not receive a punishment similar to Santos’, the lawsuit says.
Kirk’s assassination in September sparked strong and mixed responses on social media, with some mourning him and others resurfacing Kirk’s comments they disliked, including one on gun control where he said that “some” gun deaths were worth it to preserve Second Amendment rights.
Florida quickly cracked down on state employees, such as public school teachers, who posted online posts about Kirk. The day after Kirk’s death, Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas warned Florida teachers not to post negatively about Kirk or else they’d face consequences.
Nationwide, more than a dozen employees, from a Tennessee high school science teacher to a landscape supervisor at Auburn University, have sued arguing their terminations violated the First Amendment, according to The Hill.
In Florida, Brittney Brown, a state biologist fired from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission for posts about Kirk, faced a federal judge in Tallahassee this week after she sued the state. Mark Walker, the judge presiding over Brown’s case, said that negative social media posts are likely protected speech under the First Amendment.
The ACLU is also helping to represent Brown, and Morton said these lawsuits could help slow down the “erosion” of free speech rights in Florida.
“Right now it’s your state employees, but if you don’t push back against the government when they’re challenging people, eventually that just spreads to more and more people,” she said.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.