In her 28 years as a teacher working at schools in the Harris County area, Jennifer Courtemanche felt most at home at Lee High School. That changed for the 54-year-old English teacher on September 10. Hours after conservative influencer Charlie Kirk\u2019s assasination, Courtemanche made a series of posts on Facebook about the right-wing influencer\u2019s death and was met with dozens of comments, texts, and voicemails from strangers attacking her positions. Someone\u2014it\u2019s unclear who\u2014reported her to the Goose Creek Consolidated Independent School District, while others attacked her directly. \u201cI hope you\u2019re next,\u201d one read. \u201cI hope you die by violence in front of your family,\u201d said another. \u201cKill yourself,\u201d said a third.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Courtemanche, who was born in Dallas and has lived in Texas for her whole life, had made four posts about Kirk that day. The first, in response to Utah Governor Spencer Cox\u2019s statement that Kirk\u2019s assassination<\/a> was a tragedy, read, \u201cI\u2019ll bet if the victim had been Black or Brown or a Democrat influencer he\u2019d have been singing a different tune. Could Kirk have baited just ONE too many people? Could this have been the consequences of his actions catching up with him?\u201d The second was a repost of a friend\u2019s post, containing a list of controversial statements on civil rights, the LGBTQ community, and gun deaths that Kirk had made throughout the years. The third was another repost, this time from Occupy Democrats, a progressive advocacy group, that quoted Kirk\u2014 \u201cI can\u2019t stand the word empathy, actually,\u201d\u2014with the caption \u201c#karma.\u201d And the last was another Occupy Democrats repost about President Donald Trump and other Republicans\u2019 silence after Melissa Hortman, a former speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, was assassinated in her home last June.\u00a0<\/p>\n At some point, Courtemanche\u2019s posts reached the attention of Texas State Representative Briscoe Cain, a Republican from Deer Park who represents her district. On X, he called<\/a> for her immediate termination for \u201ccelebrating the news of Kirk\u2019s assasination.\u201d That post now has over 550,000 views.\u00a0<\/p>\n That night, Courtemanche recalls furiously searching for the settings to make her account private. A half hour before midnight, she received another voicemail. \u201cI found your address. Someone is going to come to your house and f\u2014 you up, bitch,\u201d an anonymous caller said. As messages continued to pour in, she worried about how people in the community might react. Courtemanche said she and her husband didn\u2019t even go to church that Sunday, despite being regulars. Scared, Courtemanche reached out to her school principal, asking what she should do. He told her to call her local police department and to contact the district\u2019s Human Resources. She did.\u00a0<\/p>\n The next morning, the HR department rang her back. The district told her not to come in and that she was being put on administrative leave. By the next Monday, Courtemanche received an email from the district notifying her that it had reported her to the Texas Education Agency.<\/p>\n In the wake of Kirk\u2019s assassination, there was a wide push<\/a> by the Texas GOP to discipline teachers who\u2019d made posts about his passing that it deemed offensive. Two days after Kirk died, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath instructed ISDs to report instances of educators sharing inappropriate content online to his agency. In total, 350 complaints were levied, including those against Courtemanche. According to documents obtained by Texas Monthly via public-records requests, some school districts, like Goose Creek, chose to terminate employees after conducting investigations. Others simply reported the complaint for a state investigation into the matter. But more than six months after Kirk\u2019s death, it appears the discipline Texas politicians promised hasn\u2019t gone very far. All but two of the 350 complaints against teachers had been dismissed as of an April, according to the testimony of Keith Ingram, an attorney with the Office of the Attorney General.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Courtemanche\u2019s case is an instructive one outlining how the state attempted to crack down on anti-Kirk speech. On September 22, less than two weeks after her original posts, the Goose Creek school board voted to terminate<\/a> her contract by a vote of 2\u20130 with four abstentions. Mercedes Renteria III, one of the two members who voted for Courtemanche\u2019s termination, gave an interview with the town\u2019s local paper, The Baytown Sun. \u201c[S]he is an incompetent teacher, and she shouldn\u2019t have crossed the line and spoken publicly on social media and every other venue to say bad things about Charlie Kirk,\u201d he said. \u201cI think she should be fired, and karma\u2019s a bitch. How about that?\u201d<\/p>\n Courtemanche immediately sought legal representation via the Texas American Federation of Teachers, a statewide labor union. By November, she had reached a settlement with the school that cleared her of wrongdoing. She chose to retire, but per the settlement, she waited until December 31 to resign, giving her an additional year\u2019s worth of credit\u2014worth $200 each month\u2014under the teacher-retirement system.<\/p>\n Courtemanche was not alone. In January, the Texas AFT,\u00a0 which has more than 66,000 members, filed a lawsuit<\/a> against the TEA, arguing Morath\u2019s instructions for districts to report teachers violated teachers\u2019 First Amendment right to speech and \u201cunleashed a wave of retaliation and disciplinary actions against teachers.\u201d The AFT contends that simply being placed under investigation\u2014even if the probe leads nowhere\u2014negatively impacts an educator\u2019s reputation. When the state opens an investigation<\/a>, it places a flag on the educator\u2019s certification and can even include them on the agency\u2019s public registry listing employees \u201cNot Eligible For Hire,\u201d according to the TEA\u2019s website. Such investigations can result in the sanction or revocation of their teaching certificate.<\/p>\n AFT President Zeph Capo estimates that thirty to forty educators reached out to the AFT regarding discipline about Kirk posts. Some ended up being part of the litigation, while the AFT offered verbal counseling and individual representation to others. Capo said the organization\u2019s biggest concern was for educators who were unable to renew their certificates while under investigation. If an educator\u2019s certificate lapses, the school district could fire him or her automatically, he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cJust imagine you\u2019ve went to school, you\u2019ve paid a lot of money, you are now at risk of not being able to renew your certification to keep your job, all because of something you said on a Facebook post that had nothing to do with kids or anyone else,\u201d Capo said. \u201cThat has an absolute chilling effect on those individuals.\u201d<\/p>\n The Texas AFT\u2019s lawsuit is supported by six anonymous teachers\u2019 experiences, though filed on behalf of all its members. One teacher was placed on the \u201cdo not hire\u201d registry for three months, preventing them from finding work, according to the lawsuit. Another was unable to renew her certification because she was under investigation and may lose her job this month as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n Texas Monthly\u2019s investigation found that some teachers were reported for fairly tame posts, including reposts of popular progressive infographics regarding Kirk\u2019s statements and gun violence. An educator who wrote, \u201cHe was ok with children dying in schools. I am not saying he should have been shot. He defended guns above all else,\u201d received a complaint. Another educator posted a screenshot of a Newsweek article with the headline, \u201cCharlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths \u2018Unfortunately\u2019 Worth It To Keep 2nd Amendment,\u201d with the caption, \u201cFirst Amendment meets Second Amendment.\u201d That educator also received a complaint. To some observers, these posts, in particular, seem to squarely fall under the protection of the First Amendment. \u00a0<\/p>\n Because teachers are public employees, however, their free speech rights are limited in some contexts. There have not been any notable Supreme Court rulings that directly address teachers and students\u2019 social media usage, but the landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines established that if speech outside the classroom \u201cmaterially and substantially disrupt(s) the work and discipline of the school,\u201d it can be restricted.\u00a0<\/p>\n Daxton \u201cChip\u201d Stewart, a Texas Christian University professor and First Amendment expert, said that the question at the heart of the Kirk cases is whether speech outside of the classroom may have affected lessons within it. \u201cPosts about Charlie Kirk are undoubtedly a matter of public concern,\u201d Stewart said. \u201cThat\u2019s core First Amendment-protected speech. People should be able to comment about that kind of thing. So really, it comes down to, does that speech interfere with teachers\u2019 [abilities] to do their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n This question has come up repeatedly in the complaints to the TEA obtained via records request. For example, in an email to an educator with the district who received a complaint for her posts, the Eagle Mountain\u2013Saginaw ISD superintendent wrote, \u201cYou do not get to stop being a teacher off contract hours. You continue to be seen as a public service provider that is entrusted to take care of a vulnerable, impressionable community of children. It is expected that you conduct yourself in a manner at all times that is conducive to earning and maintaining the trust of the community, parents, students and coworkers.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Stewart believes this standard is unfair. If a teacher spoke about Charlie Kirk in the classroom, it would be a different story, a \u201cno-brainer,\u201d he said. But in teachers\u2019 private time, the state must prove that the speech is something outrageous for it to be punishable. (Ultimately, both Eagle Mountain\u2013Saginaw and the TEA declined to take action against the educator.)\u00a0<\/p>\n