Charlie Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, speaks before former President Donald Trump’s arrival during a Turning Point USA Believers Summit conference at the Palm Beach Convention Center on July 26, 2024.
Joe Raedle/Getty Images
A Texas Tech University law student is claiming that her First Amendment rights were violated after she was disciplined for making comments deemed “unprofessional” in the hours after the September assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk.
Ellie Fisher, a third-year law student, was found guilty of violating the Texas Tech Honor Code last month following an investigation into comments she was accused of making after Kirk’s death. Fisher was the only law student who faced such an investigation, even though news of the shooting was widely discussed across the law school on Sept. 10.
According to the lawsuit, Fisher engaged in several conversations about Kirk’s death. The filing claims Fisher commented that the wound appeared fatal. Additionally, she was in the proximity of other students who made comments such as “Charlie Kirk was going to hell.”
One month after the assassination, she was notified by the law school that she was under investigation for a possible honor code violation. The claims largely centered on the belief that Fisher, who founded the campus’s NAACP chapter and has served in several leadership positions, acted in a celebratory manner in the law school’s classrooms and clinic offices after Kirk was shot.
As noted in the filing, Fisher is Black, while the other students who discussed Kirk’s death on campus but were not investigated by the Honor Council are white. The lawsuit also claims that university officials failed to investigate after Fisher reported that a racial slur had been written on her car while parked on school property.
In a decision handed down by the Honor Council last month, a panel of faculty members characterized Fisher’s reaction to Kirk’s death as overexuberant in a manner that caused other students to feel uncomfortable. Following the investigation, the council recommended a written reprimand be added to her school record, a disciplinary action that would have to be disclosed to the state bar association.
“[Texas Tech University] faculty view Fisher’s advocacy, distinctions and achievements as nothing more than evidence that Fisher is a loud-mouth, uppity Black woman whose viewpoints and zealous advocacy activism they despise,” the lawsuit states. “By punishing Fisher for her thought crimes and speech as a private citizen on matters of public concern, Defendants betray the legacy of Charlie Kirk.”
The lawsuit disputes claims that Fisher met the news of Kirk’s death with glee, arguing that key individuals who were interviewed for the investigation testified that Fisher’s behavior did not seem out of the ordinary or unprofessional. Those statements were ultimately left out of the report, which was used during the Honor Council’s deliberations.
The final narrative painted Fisher as a “Charlie Kirk-hating fanatic” rather than a student participating in a “discussion of national news,” the lawsuit states. The filing also claims that one faculty member in particular, Terri Morgeson, spearheaded the crackdown on Fisher’s speech, although at the time of the discussions, she did not express discomfort with the subject matter.
The Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression has maintained that Fisher’s comments following Kirk’s death are protected political speech. The Supreme Court has ruled that speech deemed offensive, hateful or in poor taste cannot be infringed upon.
By failing to follow that standard, Fisher’s lawsuit claims that the Texas Tech Law School has allowed a chilling effect to silence students and faculty. Multiple students refused to appear at Fisher’s hearing out of concern they’d be similarly investigated, the filing claims.
“At the Texas Tech School of Law, it now violates the Honor Code for a Black law student to hurt people’s feelings by saying something they disagree with, or even by displaying improper emotions or impure thoughts,” the lawsuit states. “The Honor Council’s acts and omissions have done far more to disrupt the ordinary operations of the School of Law … than anything ever uttered by Ellie Fisher.”
At least one other lawsuit has been filed in Texas following investigations into reactions to Kirk’s death. In January, a state teacher’s union sued to stop the Texas Education Agency from investigating educators accused of making social media posts about Kirk. The filing referenced at least four educators who faced disciplinary action or were fired for their posts.