By the time Maria Ruhtenberg was fired from her job last September for posting about Charlie Kirk's assassination, few people even knew what she had written.
The posts and comments she had made on Facebook were only visible to her friends. Just one person, a Facebook friend she barely knew, complained to her employer. "I don't even know how we became Facebook friends, honestly," said Ruhtenberg.
After the conservative activist was shot, Ruhtenberg wrote things like "live by the sword, die by the sword" and "you reap what you sow" and that she disagreed with Kirk's views about the Second Amendment. Ruhtenberg also said that "whoever shot [Kirk] should go to prison."
Two days after that complaint, a right-wing outlet in Iowa emailed Ruhtenberg's employer to ask for a comment about her posts. The next day, she was terminated, less than five days after her initial post. Ruhtenberg had spent 15 years as a public defender for the state of Iowa.
Ruhtenberg appealed her termination with the state and got her job back in November. The civil service decision that restored Ruhtenberg's job noted that only the single complaint and the media inquiry raised concerns about her conduct.
State public defender Jeff Wright testified during the appeals proceedings that Ruhtenberg was fired because her posts were perceived as condoning violence.
Ruhtenberg then sued the state and Wright in federal court for First Amendment retaliation. In May, they settled and Ruhtenberg was awarded $125,000 in damages.
The Iowa public defender's office and Wright did not respond to a request for comment.
Nine months after Kirk's assassination, cases like Ruhtenberg's continue to be resolved in favor of people who suffered consequences for their social media activity about Kirk. While many of these plaintiffs have settled with six-figure payouts, they are still grappling, to different degrees, with the aftermath of their firings.
Some First Amendment retaliation cases saw big settlements
According to an investigation by Reuters, more than 600 people were fired, suspended or investigated for their statements about Kirk's death. So far, all the currently known resolved cases involve people who worked in government or at public institutions, where they have stronger First Amendment protections:
- Melissa Crook was a high school teacher at Creston Community School District in Iowa. She was fired after commenting on a family member's Facebook post that "I do not wish death on anyone, but [him] not being here is a blessing." She settled with the school district for $145,000 and full benefits and left the school as part of the settlement.
- Suzanne Swierc, who worked as a health educator at Ball State University in Indiana, was fired after penning a Facebook post that included "If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can't be friends" and "while it's difficult, I can and do pray for his soul." She settled for $225,000 and left the university as part of the settlement.
- Brittney Brown, formerly a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, was fired after reposting a satirical account that pretends to be a whale: "they care exactly as much [about the shooting of Kirk] as charlie kirk cared about children being shot in their classrooms, which is to say, not at all." She was fired a day after the right-wing influencer account Libs of TikTok, which was spearheaded by Chaya Raichik, highlighted Brown and called for her firing. She settled with the state for $485,000 and left the agency.
- Darren Michael, a tenured professor at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, was fired after posting a news story from 2023 with the headline "Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths 'Unfortunately' Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment." He got his job back and received a $500,000 settlement, according to The New York Times.
While many people lost their jobs over things they posted online, Larry Bushart, a retired law enforcement officer in Tennessee, was wrongfully detained. He was jailed by the local sheriff's department in Perry County, Tenn., for 37 days on a $2 million bond for posting a meme that the department claimed caused "mass hysteria." The meme quoted President Trump reacting to a school shooting in 2024 at Perry High School in Iowa: "We have to get over it." After his release, Bushart received a $835,000 settlement.
Not all of the resolved cases led to public settlement terms or monetary damages. An art professor at the University of South Dakota who was fired after posting about Kirk's death was swiftly reinstated and did not receive damages. A professor who was fired from Clemson University got his termination rescinded and would not disclose the existence or amount of damages since the settlement terms are confidential.
The heckler's veto
The wave of firings after Kirk's assassination was spurred on by pro-Trump influencers, lawmakers and Vice President JD Vance. They expressed outrage at social media posts that were seen as less than sympathetic to Kirk. They called for a mass firing campaign, encouraging people to pressure employers to fire the authors of offending posts through phone calls, emails and social media exposure.
Such mobilization can create a scenario in law called "the heckler's veto," where people intentionally try to cause disruption "in order to have [a] person punished for their opinion," said Cary Davis, an attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the nonprofit that represented Bushart.
While it's a concern, Davis said, "whether that's successful as a legal matter really depends on the situation and the specifics of the facts."
Aside from considering whether the employees were speaking in their capacity as private citizens about public affairs, "the final piece of the analysis for public employees is considering whether there is disruption to the government workplace," said Davis. In other words, did the employee's actions make it difficult for the employer to operate?
For some of the cases that were settled, the employers tried to rely on the argument that the plaintiffs caused — or could cause — disruption to the workplace.
In Bushart's case, the sheriff's department initially claimed that the meme he reposted might have caused panic at a local school, since that school's name was similar to the school referenced in the meme. However, a public records request filed by FIRE revealed the school had no communication about Bushart's post.
A Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission official told the court that in Brown's case, the agency received "hundreds of citizen contacts and multiple media inquiries" related to her post. However, the agency was only able to turn up dozens of complaints during discovery, resulting in a sanction from the court.
When it came to Ruhtenberg, the state said in the federal lawsuit that her words "were considered in determining whether they did, or likely could have, created workplace disharmony, impeded the performance of Plaintiff or other employees, or otherwise had an adverse impact on the employer's operations," even though the office only received one complaint and one media inquiry about her post.
The long shadow
For Ruhtenberg, the nine weeks it took to get her job back was one of the hardest stretches in her life. "I thought my career was over."
Ruhtenberg said she felt vindicated for successfully defending her First Amendment rights, and she hopes that other people will do the same. She told NPR she no longer discusses politics on Facebook. "It was traumatic. I don't want to go through that again," she said, "I felt targeted. I felt hated."
FIRE, the nonprofit focusing on freedom of speech, is tracking nine more similar cases still ongoing in federal courts.
Now that her case is over, Brown, the biologist, has started to speak out on social media again. She said she still doesn't know who screenshotted her Instagram story and how it ended up on Libs of TikTok's account, "but I want them to know that they lost. I won. I can speak out now. And you didn't shut me up forever."
Brown has another job now and continues to work with seabirds and shorebirds, but she told NPR she really wanted her old job back. "I know that sounds insane, but I loved what I did," she said. "I would gladly have gone back to it. That was all I wanted this entire time. And if we couldn't have that, then I at least wanted to send the message that you can't get away with stuff like this."
Crook, the high school teacher, said in a statement that she sued to "protect the rights of public educators and other public servants to engage in the public discourse." After being awarded the settlement, her priority "has shifted toward moving forward in my life and in the profession I love."
Swierc, the health educator, is still looking for jobs. She culled her social media friend list and has been going to therapy to process what happened to her. She felt a lot of things, but "the big one was shame, even though fundamentally I did nothing wrong." Losing her job felt like a rejection that cut deep, she said, but she may finally be at a point where she is starting to find peace.
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