HOUSTON — The Texas chapter of the country’s second-largest teachers union sued state education officials on Tuesday, alleging their investigation of comments by 350 educators about Charlie Kirk’s killing last year violates free speech protections.
The lawsuit, filed by the Texas American Federation of Teachers in federal court, notes that two days after the conservative activist was fatally shot during an appearance at a college in Utah, Texas’s education commissioner sent a letter to superintendents warning that the state would investigate Kirk-related posts by educators on social media considered “reprehensible and inappropriate.”
Numerous members of the union, which has 66,000 members in Texas, were then reprimanded, placed on administrative leave and fired, the lawsuit said.
“A few well-placed Texas politicians and bureaucrats think it is good for their careers to trample on educators’ free speech rights,” said Zeph Capo, the union’s president. “They decided scoring a few cheap points was worth the unfair discipline, the doxing, and the death threats targeted at Texas teachers. Meanwhile, educators and their families are afraid that they’ll lose everything: their livelihoods, their reputations, and their very purpose for being, which is to impart critical thinking.”
Jake Kobersky, a spokesman for the Texas Education Agency, said 95 of the 350 complaints remained pending this week — the rest had been “closed as …dismissed/unsubstantiated.”
“The educators subject of a closed complaint will not face a state sanction,” Kobersky said in an email, noting that, “No state sanctions have been applied at this time — again, the review and investigation process is still ongoing with 95 of the complaints.”
Kobersky said, “TEA can’t comment on outstanding legal matters.”
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