A Texas teachers union sued the state’s education department on Tuesday, accusing it of an improper “wave of retaliation” against public school employees over their social media comments following the assassination of conservative political activist Charlie Kirk.
The lawsuit says the free speech rights of teachers and other school staff were violated by the Texas Education Agency and its commissioner, Mike Morath, because they directed local school districts to document what the education agency described as “vile content” posted online after Kirk was fatally shot in September.
Despite calls for civility, some people who criticized Kirk after his assassination faced a backlash from Republicans who saw them as dishonoring him, leading to firings by universities, sports teams and media companies. Florida’s education commissioner also promised to investigate teachers over objectionable comments.
The lawsuit says the Texas agency has received more than 350 complaints about individual educators, and the agency said Tuesday that 95 investigations remain open.
Zeph Capo, president of the Texas American Federation of Teachers, alleged that the state clearly demonstrated it is trying to police speech that offends Morath because it hasn’t given similar directives after mass shootings or other violence, such as the killing of actor-director Rob Reiner.
“It was in fact a witch hunt,” Capo said during a news conference in Austin.
The education agency said it could not comment “on outstanding legal matters.”
The lawsuit cites the cases of four unnamed teachers — one in the Houston area and three in the San Antonio area — who were investigated over social media posts critical of Kirk or of the reaction to his death. According to the lawsuit, the Houston-area teacher was fired, while the three San Antonio-area teachers remain under investigation.
Texas AFT, which represents about 66,000 teachers and other school employees, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Austin. The four teachers were anonymous because of concerns about their safety, Capo said.
The lawsuit comes less than month after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, both conservative Republicans, announced a partnership with Turning Point USA, the right-wing group Kirk founded, to create chapters on every high school campus in the state.
The Associated Press sent emails seeking comment from the governor’s office and Turning Point USA, which are not named as defendants in the suit.
Morath told school superintendents in a Sept. 12 letter that social media posts could violate Texas educators’ code of ethics and promised that “each instance will be thoroughly investigated.”
The lawsuit argues that Morath’s letter represents a state policy that is too broad and too vague to be enforced fairly and without squelching protected speech.
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that agencies can limit public employees’ speech if it deals with their official duties or if it could disrupt the workplace, but Randi Weingarten, the union’s national president, said neither is an issue in the Texas lawsuit.
“We’re talking about schoolteachers when they were not in classrooms — in private, on their own social media, commenting on a matter that everyone in the country and the world saw,” she said during the news conference.
The lawsuit said none of their posts celebrated or promoted violence, which Morath said wouldn’t be protected speech.
Kirk was an unabashed Christian conservative who often made provocative statements about politics, gender and race. He founded Turning Point USA in 2012 and built it into one of the country’s largest political organizations, shaping a generation of young people by taking his conservative message onto college campuses. He was shot during such an appearance at a university in Utah.
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