How Florida officials are cracking down on speech around Charlie Kirk

TAMPA, Fla. — About an hour before Charlie Kirk was pronounced dead from a gunshot wound, Karen Leader, a Florida Atlantic University art history professor, had logged on.

Leader was following the news of Kirk’s shooting on the social media site X. It didn’t look good for Kirk, the 31-year-old founder of the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA. Leader quickly reposted a message condemning the shooting.

Then, Leader saw a narrative begin to form on her timeline about Kirk’s life. She saw posts painting Kirk as a noncontroversial free speech champion. The professor saw evidence to the contrary, and she wanted to weigh in.

She reposted an account that noted Kirk’s take on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which he called a “mistake,” and his pro-gun rights stance. The next day, while conservatives mourned Kirk’s death, Leader amplified numerous other posts critical of the activist, and a few clips of Kirk’s more controversial statements, along with the commentary, “This was Charlie Kirk.”

That same day, Jordan Chamberlain, a former Gov. Ron DeSantis staffer who has more than 100,000 followers on X, took screenshots of Leader’s posts and tagged the Florida Atlantic University official account. Her post went viral.

On Sept. 13, Leader received word she’d been suspended by the university.

“Our focus remains on our academic community’s responsibility to promote civil discourse, conduct healthy debate, and treat one another with respect,” the university’s president, Adam Hasner, said in a statement.

In the days since Kirk’s assassination, conservative Florida officials have sought to crack down on speech they describe as celebrating or glorifying the violence. Fueled by online outrage, elected officials have called for individuals to lose their jobs over posts about Kirk, including some who work in the private sector.

Some 30 public school teachers are facing discipline for their post-assassination commentary, according to the state’s largest teachers union. Florida Republican officials all over the state have called for Palmetto Bay Village Council member Steve Cody to resign over posts he made about Kirk’s support for gun rights. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission fired a researcher who, according to the agency, “shared a social media post that made light of the assassination.” Leader is one of three professors who have been suspended at Florida Atlantic alone.

“This isn’t cancel culture, it’s accountability culture,” said Florida House Rep. Juan C. Porras, a personal friend of Kirk’s who has been among the most vocal in calling for people to lose their jobs in recent days. “Everyone is entitled to their political beliefs. If you don’t have human compassion, if you don’t have any sense for the life of your fellow Americans, whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, that’s where we draw the line.”

The national conversation about free speech has a distinctly Floridian flavor. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former U.S. senator from Florida, has said his department would deport legal residents who celebrated Kirk’s murder. Pam Bondi, Florida’s former attorney general who’s now the U.S. attorney general, said in a podcast interview that “hate speech” could land Americans in legal jeopardy.

Bondi’s statement was roundly criticized, including by conservatives, as going against the First Amendment right to freedom of speech, protected from government censorship and regulation. But most moves cracking down on speech have been cheered by Florida officials.

When Disney-owned ABC announced it would take comedian Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show off the air — a move widely seen to be politically motivated following statements Kimmel made about Kirk’s shooter — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier posted an emoji of a hand waving goodbye on social media.

DeSantis, too, has defended the firings and suspensions in his state, and his administration has mobilized against those they claim are celebrating the killing.

The day after the shooting, Florida Commissioner of Education Anastasios Kamoutsas posted a letter warning teachers that their credentials could be revoked if they post statements that “undermine the trust of the students and families that they serve.”

On Monday, Ray Rodrigues, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida, wrote in a letter to university presidents that student and faculty free speech rights are “not absolute.” Rodrigues warned that “celebrating or excusing campus violence” like the type that killed Kirk could have the effect of “breeding further violence.”

Some see Florida’s actions as a straightforward attack on free expression.

“The commissioner’s letter has certainly — and I think it was intended for this — sent a chilling effect throughout our schools," said Andrew Spar, the president of the Florida Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.

Whether Floridians’ First Amendment rights are being violated by the recent crackdown is a question for the courts, free speech experts say.

Clay Calvert, who studies free speech as a senior fellow at the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute, noted that public employees don’t have unlimited rights to say whatever they want. However, those who face consequences for making statements on their own time about newsworthy events might have a First Amendment case, he said.

How strong an individual’s First Amendment argument is depends in part on what they said, Calvert noted.

Those outwardly condoning the violence will likely have less legal standing than those merely posting that they disagreed with Kirk’s views, experts said.

The statements that have already cost Florida employees vary in severity. The biological scientist who got fired was targeted by the conservative X account @LibsofTikTok for reposting a meme from an account called whalefact.

“The whales are deeply saddened to learn of the shooting of charlie kirk, haha just kidding,” read the post the scientist shared, “they care exactly as much as charlie kirk cared about children being shot in their classrooms, which is to say, not at all.”

On Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Randy Fine posted that a Florida nurse had been fired for writing, “I’m cheering for the assassination.”

While these cases are adjudicated, those like Leader have had to navigate the unpleasant scrutiny of the online right. Some have hired lawyers. Leader said her home address was posted online, and she’s received death threats.

“I didn’t speak anything about his murder, about his death, the manner of his death, that he deserved to die, that I condoned violence,” Leader said in an interview. “When Adam Hasner posted that public statement, he wrote that I had made several posts about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. That was inaccurate. When you’re inaccurate in that way and you can’t take it back, that is harmful to me.”

Another Florida Atlantic professor, Rebel Cole, has faced discipline for rhetoric in support of Kirk. In posts on X, he wrote to various Kirk critics, “We are going to hunt you down. We are going to identify you. Then we are going to make you radioactive to polite society.” (Cole has said on X that the university violated both his and Leader’s First Amendment rights by suspending them.)

Generally, though, it’s liberals who’ve been subject to scrutiny. On Sunday, Fine encouraged his X followers to report those “celebrating the violence.”

In an interview, he cited a recent YouGov survey that found about 1 in 4 voters who identify as “very liberal” say it’s always or usually acceptable to feel joy about the death of a political opponent.

“A meaningful percentage of Americans are legitimizing political violence,” Fine said. “We have to shut that down, and one way to do that is to make the consequences for engaging in it severe.”

The dynamic, with conservative activists looking to crack down on speech they find distasteful, is somewhat ironic, Calvert noted. For years, conservatives like DeSantis have bemoaned progressive hostility to certain forms of speech.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot.

“It’s almost guaranteed that at some point, a Democrat might be elected president again. The danger for conservatives is that at some point, this is going to come back to haunt them,” Calvert said. “Whatever tools are being used right now by the right are going to be used against them.”