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America’s teachers have been put on notice.
If they posted “despicable comments” about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, they could lose their state certification, Florida Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas warned in a letter. Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters said the same. Texas says it is investigating some 180 complaints about teachers’ social media posts about Kirk’s death.
Republicans have highlighted the most extreme responses to Kirk’s public murder — “1 Nazi down” one teacher is alleged to have posted — to fuel their message that public schools have become deeply out of step with broader American values. South Carolina Republican Rep. Nancy Mace urged the Education Department to withhold federal funding from schools that don’t take action against teachers who “glorify or justify political violence.”
In a video posted to X, Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the “small but vocal fringe” celebrating Kirk’s killing nonetheless represented “further evidence of the profound crisis in our classrooms and on our campuses.”
“We must end the ideological capture that causes our schools and universities to become cradles of intolerance and political violence,” she said as she praised schools that had taken action against teachers. McMahon urged others to do the same.
This intense scrutiny of educators’ online comments at the federal and state level has reignited debate about educators’ free speech rights inside and outside the classroom. But it has also underscored tensions between the many roles teachers inhabit: role model, facilitator, change maker, public employee, and private citizen.
What teachers can say legally isn’t the only factor they should consider, said Derek Black, a University of South Carolina professor and constitutional law expert.
“There are things I don’t say at Thanksgiving, and it’s not because I think I’m wrong, but because the peace of the Thanksgiving dinner is more important and the peace of the family is more important,” he said.
But scholars who study education and polarization say that with many states already restricting how teachers approach contentious issues, the current climate only makes it more likely they’ll avoid those topics entirely. That would be to the detriment of their students, they said.
“These efforts to just dismiss people are very dangerous,” said John Rogers, a professor at the University of California Los Angeles. “These efforts have a strong political motivation behind them, and I worry that it will contribute to the feeling that teachers already have that they just shouldn’t say anything.”
Kirk loomed large in young people’s political lives
Kirk, 31, founded Turning Point USA, arguably the most influential organization for young conservatives. Kirk espoused gun rights and Christianity and opposed abortion and LGBTQ rights. He called the passage of the Civil Rights Act a “mistake.”
The group claims some 800 college chapters and more than 1,000 high school chapters, and is credited with helping President Donald Trump secure his 2024 victory by gaining votes among young men.
Politically aware students of all stripes knew Kirk from video clips of his campus debates that circulated widely on platforms such as TikTok. Kirk was participating in just such an event at Utah Valley University when he was shot and killed Sept. 10. Many students encountered gruesome uncensored video of the shooting on their phones.
In social media groups where teachers gather, some wondered about how to guide conversation among students with divergent views about Kirk’s legacy, or whether they really had any wisdom to impart when they themselves were reeling from another act of political violence. Some veteran teachers advised their colleagues to just stick to the lesson plan.
Not everyone had complicated feelings, though. Some people took to social media to say they were glad Kirk was dead. Some said they weren’t sad. Some of those people were teachers.
Right-wing influencers urged their followers to find and report anyone celebrating Kirk’s death. Those targeted have included people who condemned the killing but used harsh words to describe Kirk.
The firings and suspensions soon followed.
Teachers are on leave pending investigations in dozens of districts, according to media reports. One Wisconsin associate principal received death threats after she was falsely linked to a social media post about Kirk. A Massachusetts school requested extra police patrols.
Social media has made controversial private speech public
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1968 sided with a teacher who was fired after writing a letter to the editor complaining about a school board tax proposal, establishing that teachers have most of the free speech rights enjoyed by other citizens when they’re speaking outside the classroom.
But teachers still can face consequences when their speech affects their school or district in a negative way, and conflict can occur across the political spectrum. The Supreme Court declined to take up the case of a Massachusetts teacher fired over social media posts mocking transgender people. But an appeals court sided with a teacher who was disciplined for displaying a Make America Great Again hat during a diversity training.
“People of more conservative persuasion believe that progressive educators have been policing the conversation to their liking over the last five or six years,” Black said.
Technology has blurred the line between public and private speech. Screenshots and sloppy privacy settings convert opinions that once might have stayed among friends into viral content.
That new online reality has led the National Education Association to caution teachers against offensive and vitriolic posts in its guide to social media use. The union highlighted when a Milwaukee teacher was placed on leave after posting that it was “awesome” that conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh was dying of cancer.
“By engaging in personal and vicious commentary, the teacher became an easy target for local outrage,” the guide says.
Now that outrage is nationalized. Vice President J.D. Vance called for investigations into foundations that support left-leaning nonprofits, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested that refusing service to Kirk’s supporters may violate their civil rights.
Are teachers being threatened or given fair rules?
But does that zeal translate into clear and fair boundaries for teachers outside their classrooms?
Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, said Kirk’s killing horrified him, and he doesn’t condone comments celebrating it. But personal opinions expressed on social media — especially on pages that teachers may have believed were private — don’t mean a teacher can’t be professional in the classroom.
“The overwhelming majority of teachers saw [the letter] as a threat and not a guidance document,” he said.
Nathalia Medina, a spokesperson for the Florida Department of Education, said it was “false and misleading” to suggest the state was trying to silence teachers.
“Florida makes it clear: free speech does not excuse unprofessional conduct,” she wrote in an email. “Teachers are entrusted with positions of authority and responsibility over children. The Commissioner is committed to ensuring the educational environment is not impacted by inappropriate statements made outside the classroom.”
Medina did not respond to questions about how Florida defines inappropriate statements.
Public school is often children’s first experience of government and civil society, said Robert Kim, executive director of the Education Law Center. When teachers face severe consequences for private speech, that tells students they don’t really have free speech.
“That’s not the kind of civil liberties education we want to give students or perpetuate as a society,” Kim said.
To encourage student debate, teachers need a plan
Teachers’ classroom speech has also been under more scrutiny in recent years.
Eighteen states have laws restricting how teachers talk about race, history, and sexuality in the classroom or limiting discussion of so-called divisive concepts. Even in states with no restrictive laws, teachers report self-censoring to avoid conflict.
And school districts are spending less time on professional development to help teachers guide students through discussions of contentious issues respectfully, according to research by Rogers of UCLA and Joseph Kahne, a professor at University of California Riverside.
In 2018, more than half of school districts in politically mixed areas conducted such training. By 2022, it was just a third, and it may be even fewer now.
The classroom can be a space where students learn to disagree respectfully, bring evidence to support their arguments, and remain open to other opinions, Kahne said. Teachers can talk about their political views if they have a careful plan for how to share that information and make sure that disagreement is not just tolerated but welcome.
But Kahne fears more teachers will simply steer clear of current events and contentious issues, meaning that students get less practice in the skills that might move us toward a better political climate.
“That is the fundamental goal of a public school in a democratic society,” he said. “The fear is that as partisanship ramps up, more people will try to use the public school as a place to promote their perspective, but perhaps even more that as tensions rise, public schools will just avoid dealing with these issues.”
Erica Meltzer is Chalkbeat’s national editor based in Colorado. Contact Erica at emeltzer@chalkbeat.org.
