Ball State University in Indiana has agreed to pay $225,000 to a former administrator who was fired for her Facebook post accusing Charlie Kirk of spreading fear, the latest legal settlement awarded to a worker dismissed for criticizing the conservative activist after he was assassinated.
“As a public university, Ball State cannot fire an employee for protected speech made as a private citizen,” the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana, which sued on the administrator’s behalf, said in a statement this week announcing the settlement.
Employers in several states have also settled with or reinstated workers.
Scores of people — health care workers, lawyers, journalists, waiters and waitresses — were fired or faced other repercussions for their negative comments about Mr. Kirk, igniting a debate over how far employers can go in restricting employees’ political expression that occurs outside the workplace. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression said it was tracking 13 lawsuits in federal court from people who had been disciplined or terminated for their comments about Mr. Kirk.
The Ball State case involved a health care administrator for the university named Suzanne Swierc (pronounced “swirtz”). She became one of many Americans targeted in a campaign by Mr. Kirk’s followers, including Vice President JD Vance, to expose and retaliate against those who had spoken critically of Mr. Kirk after his assassination last fall on a Utah university campus.
“If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends,” she wrote on her Facebook page several hours after he was killed. Her post expressed disdain for Mr. Kirk’s loyal fans but also condemned his death as the kind of violence she said was too common in American politics.
Her settings were private, but one of her followers took a screenshot without her knowledge and sent it to others.
Ms. Swierc’s post spread widely after it was publicized by Indiana’s attorney general, Todd Rokita, who had urged people to alert his office to anyone “celebrating or glorifying the tragedy,” according to her lawsuit.
Mr. Rokita’s action — together with a post by Libs of TikTok, a social media account known for mocking left-wing politics — prompted a deluge of phone calls, texts, voice mail messages and threats to both Ms. Swierc and the university. Even Elon Musk weighed in.
The university, which admitted no wrongdoing as part of the settlement, said that after Ms. Swierc posted her comment, on Sept. 10, 2025, the university’s operations were seriously impeded. Though the First Amendment broadly protects political expression, the right to free speech is not as absolute as many assume — especially when a workplace is involved. The Supreme Court has established that a public institution like Ball State can restrict employee speech on matters of public concern if the comments interfere with the institution’s ability to function.
Ball State’s president, Geoffrey S. Mearns, wrote in an email to university leadership this week that “disruptive and disturbing” phone calls, as well as “more than 130 emails,” including from donors threatening to withhold contributions, “prevented our staff from performing their usual responsibilities.”
Some staff members who fielded the calls said they had been threatened with violence and felt uncomfortable being on campus, he said.
Ms. Swierc’s post, he added, had damaged her credibility to interact with students who did not share her views about Mr. Kirk. “I concluded that I had the legal authority to terminate Ms. Swierc’s employment,” he said in his email.
But the First Amendment makes such cases difficult to defend, as the recent spate of settlements in Kirk-related cases has shown. Florida officials agreed last week to pay $485,000 to Brittney Brown, a biologist, after the state Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission terminated her over a meme she reposted to her private Instagram account. In Tennessee, a professor at Austin Peay State University received a $500,000 settlement and was reinstated after posting about Mr. Kirk’s support for expansive gun rights. Clemson University in South Carolina rescinded its firing of an assistant professor in another case.
Greg Greubel, a lawyer for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said that while public pressure campaigns have been around forever, the efforts to shame and punish private citizens, with the endorsement of political leaders, was new and troubling.
“I think the big difference this time was the amount of public officials amplifying these calls for terminations,” he said. “It created an immediate chilling effect — and ruined a lot of people’s lives.”
In an interview, Ms. Swierc said that when she signed the settlement agreement last week, she cried.
“It felt a little bit like closing the lid on a coffin,” said the former director of health and advocacy at Ball State, who is now 37 and still looking for a full-time job while she works part-time at a local nonprofit in Muncie, Ind.
“It’s final,” she said. “I can’t believe this happened to me and it’s over.”
Though she was glad for the settlement, Ms. Swierc said she was still dealing with the effects of the stress.
“I still have depression and anxiety and panic attacks,” she said. “I’m still picking up the pieces.”
Jeremy W. Peters is a Times reporter who covers debates over free expression and how they impact higher education and other vital American institutions.
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