{"id":41876,"date":"2025-11-11T02:21:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-11T02:21:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/41876\/"},"modified":"2025-11-11T02:21:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T02:21:11","slug":"former-fwc-employee-seeks-reinstatement-after-firing-over-charlie-kirk-social-media-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/41876\/","title":{"rendered":"Former FWC employee seeks reinstatement after firing over Charlie Kirk social media post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV\/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) &#8211; A federal judge heard arguments Monday morning in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/2025\/10\/01\/former-state-employee-files-lawsuit-against-fwc-after-firing-over-charlie-kirk-post\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.wctv.tv\/2025\/10\/01\/former-state-employee-files-lawsuit-against-fwc-after-firing-over-charlie-kirk-post\/\">the case of a former Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission employee<\/a> seeking reinstatement after being fired for sharing a social media post about Charlie Kirk\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Brittney Brown, a biologist who worked at the Tyndall Air Force Base Critical Wildlife Area, was terminated after sharing a post from a parody account that said whales weren\u2019t saddened by Kirk\u2019s death.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Brown shared the post on her private Instagram account in September while on vacation. The post was later shared and went viral, leading to her termination shortly after.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">FWC said on social media that making light of Charlie Kirk\u2019s death didn\u2019t align with the state agency\u2019s values.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">This weekend, we were made aware of a deeply troubling incident involving an FWC employee who shared a social media post that made light of the assassination of Charlie Kirk. The comments and actions of this individual are not in line with the FWC, our values, or our mission. We\u2026<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 MyFWC (@MyFWC) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/MyFWC\/status\/1967618398873084198?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">September 15, 2025<\/a> <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Gary Edinger, Brown\u2019s lawyer, said his client\u2019s social media post should not have led to her termination. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cWe live in a world where things go viral over the internet, people hit the like button or dislike button. That\u2019s what happened here. A couple of hundred people maybe followed \u2018Libs of TikTok\u2019s\u2019 lead, complained about it, and in America, that\u2019s not supposed to lead to a government firing,\u201d Edinger said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Brown is claiming the state violated her freedom of speech when she was fired over the post on her private account.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">In addition to seeking reinstatement, Brown is asking the judge to award her back pay.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">FWC and the governor\u2019s office did not respond to requests for comment about the case.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The judge will rule on the case at a later date.<\/p>\n<p class=\"copyright |\">Copyright 2025 WCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (WCTV\/Gray Florida Capital Bureau) &#8211; A federal judge heard arguments Monday morning in the case of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41877,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[27798,407,1442,9750,27799,2687,12275,28,11113,4747,2161,833,4217,232,234,233],"class_list":{"0":"post-41876","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tallahassee","8":"tag-brittney-brown","9":"tag-charlie-kirk","10":"tag-cody-butler","11":"tag-employee","12":"tag-employment-rights","13":"tag-first-amendment","14":"tag-fish-and-wildlife-commission","15":"tag-florida","16":"tag-free-speech","17":"tag-fwc","18":"tag-government","19":"tag-lawsuit","20":"tag-poltics","21":"tag-tallahassee","22":"tag-tallahassee-headlines","23":"tag-tallahassee-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41876","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41876"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41876\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41876"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41876"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41876"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}