WTW98: Your Free Speech "Rights" as a Teacher in the Wake of Charlie Kirk's Murder
Part 1. We dive headfirst into stories in which a teacher's First Amendment rights appear to have been violated. It seems clear to us how wrong this all is after reading the complaint, but how will these cases play out in court? If you enjoy our work, please consider leaving a 5-star review! You can always email questions, comments, and leads to lydia@seriouspod.com. Please pretty please consider becoming a patron at patreon.com/wherethereswoke!
What's so scary about the woke mob, how often you just don't see them coming?
Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed.
Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic can sound.
The woke monster is here and it's coming for every, everything, everything, everything, everything.
Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green Eminem will now wear sneakers.
Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke.
I'm Thomas.
That over there is Lydia Smith.
How are you doing?
Oh, I'm doing all right.
Silence.
Jeez.
Jeez.
You're being silenced.
My free speech.
Yep.
My free speech.
Back off.
There used to be fake free speech stuff and now it's entirely real free speech stuff.
Yeah.
Can I say we just came back from QED?
Sure, you can say that.
Thank you.
And you got randomly selected for more security.
And I could not help but like initially think in my head that it was like you were found out or something.
I was like, oh, geez, what's going to happen?
There wasn't 0% of my brain thinking that, but I was like, yeah, this is one of those.
It's one of those random ones.
I think it was on my ticket or whatever.
Like, I think that like a certain amount of them.
It was just because we were having the check-in issues and everything too.
So it was like all these things leading up to it where when you were pulled off to the side for additional screening, I was like, oh my God, they're going to take him to a back room.
Yeah.
The thing is, I'm white and named Thomas Smith.
So it's going to take a lot.
I'm going to need to achieve much more notoriety before we can even get close to that.
And then the minute I was being screened for the extra security and because we were coming back from the UK, basically, and there's a bunch of like people.
Yeah, I can't remember where we were.
Yeah, it was through Dublin.
Yeah, okay.
So there's a bunch of Irish people who are like not happy to be there at all.
I was like, okay, these aren't doing the empire's will, you know, like these aren't.
Right.
So I felt okay about it.
That's good.
That's good.
We live to fight another day.
Yeah.
So we have a lot for you folks.
We've got a lot.
And I think it's important because this show for so long, the point of the show is to talk about to debunk anti-woke scare stories.
And so many of those have involved fake crap about free speech.
You know, bullshit stories about how a professor's free speech was taken away because they said a slur and then got mildly reprimanded.
I could talk for an hour just on the ones that I remember off the top of my head that fall into that category.
You have talked for hours.
Yeah.
In fact, I won't do that now because we are going to share with you our little live podcast, mini live podcast we did from California Free Thought Day, which we do every year.
Love that.
Fun stuff.
Just looking into that research was like, God, this is so much worse than you even think.
However bad you think the free speech violations over Charlie Kirk in particular, just Charlie Kirk, however bad you think they were, I'm guessing you're undershooting it by 10 times over.
We started looking into these not even for very long before it was like, geez, this is bad.
This is a genuine free speech crisis.
Yeah.
And nobody fucking gives a shit.
All the people who cried and cried are yelling, crying, saluting the flag, quoting the Constitution because a professor said a slur and got a mild reprimand.
Now 10 million times worse is happening for real, like actual real.
And nobody cares.
I mean, it's somewhere in the news, maybe sometimes, a little bit.
It's not like it's completely absent.
You know, there's a few sources, but it's not covered in the same way.
It's not covered with the same urgency.
Yeah.
It's more of a, here are the facts.
Here's what's happening.
You know, and this teacher is fearful for their life.
And it's, it just feels so neutral and so sanitized.
But when you look at it, all of this together, it really is a crisis, like you said.
Yeah.
And so we have a lot of them.
Some of these, I came up with a few of them and they're moving.
They're tragic.
They're, I mean, it's just awful.
And some that you've further researched that I don't know about, I'm excited to hear about.
I want to give these their due.
I want to talk about these, what's going on, and tell these stories because they're not being told.
And if these stories are this bad, these are the ones we can find because these folks are fighting back and suing in like federal court.
Right.
That's not something just anyone can do.
I have intimate knowledge of how not easy it is to do anything legal, even when you have the better case for sure.
Going through that, the money, just the absolute hell that it is to try to win anything in court system.
We have to assume that this is just a tiny minority of what's actually happening.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
So I guess it's not super funny right now, but it's something that's been on my mind.
Like I said, for a while, I've been telling you, like, we need to do this.
So we're doing it.
I'm excited to at least get started on this project and let's talk about the real free speech crisis, the actual free speech crisis.
That's not a dude putting a slur on a test and then crying about it for four years or whatever.
It's been so long.
It's so pathetic.
Get over it.
I just want, I may pepper in, even though you're going to hear it in the free thought day one, I may pepper in some Kilborn just here and there, just to contrast.
Just to, I know, I know sometimes it gets repetitive, but often I get repetitive because I can't fucking believe the nonsense world we're in.
Yeah.
It's like me being like, really?
Are we, are you hearing?
Hold on, let me repeat that just in case people didn't hear what I said.
Like, that's what it feels like.
I wouldn't have to be doing that if it didn't feel like no one understands how fucking crazy the world is right now.
So anyway, that's what we'll do after the break.
Please support the show.
I would argue, I always say it's pretty important.
Now I'd say it's more important than ever when, again, we've been on the side of debunking the bullshit ones of this.
And now we're going to be on the side of being the few sources telling the stories of the real free speech violations here.
And I would argue both of those things have been equally important.
And please help us do that.
Thanks so much to our supporters at patreon.com slash where there's woke.
You're the best.
Wokeies, we call them.
Yep, we sure do.
The Trump thing.
Wokeies.
They called him.
I just need, what's his name?
Shrimp AJ.
Yeah, Shrimp AJ.
Austin.
James Austin Johnson or something.
Yeah, I just need that guy who's now on SNL and became less funny.
But before he was on SNL, his Trump impressions were the best.
They're still good.
But anyway, I need him to do just the Trump impression.
That's who I think of instead of Trump.
Yeah.
He's actually replaced Trump in my brain, which is good.
Oh, that is good.
Anyway, we'll take a break.
You can avoid the auto ads at that Patreon and you can support the show, patreon.com slash where there's woke.
Okay, so despite us being silenced, let's talk.
Okay, let's talk.
So on September 10th, Charlie Kirk died.
Sorry, it's like every episode.
I'm just going to start it with this.
What?
No fucking way.
Yeah.
And if the government's listening, I'm not laughing about that he died.
I am.
Leave it alone.
I don't care.
But that really just grounds everything we're going to be talking about here.
People obviously had thoughts when he died about his legacy.
Yeah, including him.
He had thoughts.
And some people just shared his thoughts.
Right.
And we live in a digital age.
And so people, when they have their thoughts, they post about it for better or for worse.
And everybody does.
I mean, it's just everybody.
If you have any access to any social media at all, you're going to be posting your thoughts about what you ate for lunch.
You're going to be posting your thoughts about politicians that you like or dislike.
Yeah, that's what I do.
You're going to post your thoughts about stupid things and big things.
It doesn't really matter.
But because people were posting their thoughts about Charlie Kirk, someone who was deeply connected to Donald Trump getting elected and the rise of conservatism in the youth and kind of the future of the party in a lot of ways that there were so many connections between Charlie Kirk, his organization turning point, and the Trump administration and other elected officials, it meant that if you posted about that in a way that the government didn't like, things were different this time around.
I'm going to slightly, I don't know if quibble is the right word, but I'm going to slightly characterize it a little differently, which is it's not necessarily because of all that, although it is.
It's mainly because of the opportunistic fascism of it.
Yes.
I agree with that.
I don't know how you separate those two things.
I'm not really saying one is wrong or whatever as an interpretation, but I mean, it really is just they take the opportunity.
Like if they have the justification and our country seems to be letting them get away with it, they're going to do a fascism and then they're going to do 10 fascisms and they're going to keep doing it until somebody stops them.
Yep.
Yeah.
No, I don't disagree with you there at all.
And Charlie Kirk was likely just the vessel for this opportunism, his death specifically, I guess, not him as a person.
But I have some video footage that PBS put together actually setting up in an interview involving fire and Jamal Bowie, which is an interesting pairing.
I listened to it.
It's all very like not exciting.
But I don't know.
I know, I do too.
But I was hoping for some kind of pushback with how they were interpreting this.
I think it's the way the questions were set up.
We need to listen to where there's vocabulary.
Maybe.
But no, I think it's the way that the questions were set up.
They were definitely like directed questions at each person asking them about particular things.
But we're going to be listening in on the first part of this video so we can hear the Trump administration officials, like literally Trump administration officials, have thoughts on what should happen to folks that are posting things that they don't like.
Officials hailed Kirk's political prowess and his fight for free speech.
Charlie lived by the principle that no matter how horrible another person's speech may be, their ideas must be defeated by better ideas, not by resorting to violence.
He died?
Damn, B. Life comes at you fast.
But some, especially online, used their right to free speech to speak out against Kirk and his message.
I won't let anybody distort reality and try to paint this picture that Charlie Kirk was this God-fearing family man who just wanted to go to college campuses and debate.
Comments the vice president and president say should and will have consequences.
So when you see someone celebrating Charlie's murder, call them out in hell.
Call their employer.
That's Jamie.
I don't believe in political violence.
But here they believe in civility.
You know, they're already under major investigation.
A lot of the people that you would traditionally say are on the left.
Loki.
Donald Trump.
White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller vowed to use law enforcement to go after Americans who mocked Kirk's death, calling that domestic terrorism.
We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile because the power of law enforcement under President Trump's leadership will be used to find you.
We'll use it to take away your money, take away your power, and if you've broken the law to take away your freedom.
Already, there have been repercussions.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth suspended an Army colonel for a post criticizing Kirk after his death and said the Pentagon was, quote, very closely tracking responses celebrating or mocking Kirk's death.
Adding they quote, will address immediately.
The number two official at the State Department promised to punish foreigners who mocked the killing, calling them, quote, not welcome visitors to our country.
Right-wing conspiracy theorist and Trump ally Laura Lumer.
She would try to ruin the professional aspirations of anyone who celebrated Kirk's death.
So here we have JD Vance, Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Pete Hegseth, Marco Rubio's right-hand guy, all folks saying they will be going after people who say things about Charlie Kirk and his death that they do not like.
We're going to dig into some of those examples and not just the comments that they played during that video just now of random people on TikTok.
We're going to be talking about people in university environments, in public high school environments.
And that is not to say that this is the only place where this is happening.
We know that people are losing their jobs, are being investigated, are being suspended in a variety of industries.
But we're just going to be focusing today on some of those cases within the education system.
I think what's amazing about this is so many things, but I think what's surprising to me, I guess, is it's one thing to see that fucking child, Stephen Miller, trying to do whatever he can with his fucking grimy hands, wherever he has his power.
I don't know where to look.
Yeah, yeah.
We can't go after you.
He yells everything like that.
That's not particularly shocking or surprising.
They're going to do what they're going to do.
I think what's amazing when we look at this is it's not like the cases we're going to talk about are all Prager University, whatever, or like Liberty University or like super right-wing conservative places.
Right.
There's enough people in power in different non-like private religious schools, I guess, who are making this happen in a really disturbing way.
Like it's disturbing to witness.
And this is everything that they thought trigger warnings and safe spaces was.
This is everything that they whined about and lied about for 10 years at least, probably more, but like minimum 10 years.
It is everything that they lied about and so much worse.
Yeah, I think the other interesting thing here that we'll see is, you know, we saw this sort of flip-floppy nature with places like Target, you know, when DEI was on the chopping block, I guess, and there was that threat from people in power.
Like the people at these schools, in the same way that the CEO of Target, they don't actually care about these principles.
They're just going to fold basically for whatever person is pushing on them at that time, which is very disappointing.
The first case that we're going to be talking about is out of the University of South Dakota.
This is a professor named Philip Hook, and he is a tenured professor of art at the University of South Dakota.
He's been there since 2006.
Really, really, really long time to be teaching there.
That's like one of the youngest professors, though.
1906 is most of them.
Yeah.
And so the case that we're going to be looking at that he filed is a complaint for a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, and permanent injunction.
And so I'm going to be referencing this complaint that he wrote to help establish the facts that happened in this particular case.
then we'll talk about what's been happening with this complaint and where we are now.
Again, September 10th, Charlie Kirk died.
And then he posted a message, Professor Hook, to his personal Facebook account.
And about three hours after he posted a Facebook post, he took it down.
He was at home this entire time.
He was not on the clock working or anything like that.
And then he posted a second message.
The first Facebook post that he made is, okay, I don't give a flying fuck about this Kirk person.
Apparently, he was a hate-spreading Nazi.
I wasn't paying close enough attention to the idiotic right fringe to even know who he was.
I'm sorry for his family that he was a hate-spreading Nazi and got killed.
I'm sure they deserve better.
Maybe good people could now enter their lives.
But geez, where was all this concern when the politicians in Minnesota were shot and the school shootings and Capitol police?
I have no thoughts or prayers for this hate-spreading Nazi.
A shrug, maybe.
Yep.
So again, he took that down.
He took that down after about three hours and then posted this following message.
Apparently, my frustration with the sudden onslaught of coverage concerning a guy shot today led to a post I now regret posting.
I'm sure many folks fully understood my premise, but the simple fact that some were offended led me to remove the post.
I extend this public apology to those who were offended.
I'm Shanti.
Weird use of the word, apparently.
My only critique.
Well, for one, actually, my only critique is that he doesn't need to take anything back because it was a totally reasonable post.
Now, do we know why he might have been taking it back?
Again, it's his personal Facebook, right?
It is his personal Facebook.
Yeah.
So do we know if it's just like from pushback from like, you know, friends and family or at that point, was it job related, I guess?
Do we know?
All we can really surmise is that it likely was just friends and family at that point.
Because I'm looking at the school's opposition to this motion and I don't see necessarily where they've called out that this message spread far and wide as a result.
And, you know, that they reached out and asked him to take it down.
I don't see anything of that nature.
So he just did it himself.
But then it says that the next day, so September 11th, South Dakota Speaker of the House, John Hansen, who was also a candidate for governor in 2026, so someone who's actively campaigning right now, quote, immediately reached out to USD President Sheila Gestring and called on the professor to be fired.
That was in his own words, by the way.
Cool.
So the government already, I mean, it's so hard not to go into it.
Already, this is so much worse than professor gets some pushback from some students and the administration mostly ignores them, but maybe is like, hey, maybe be more considerate.
That's the case we've heard 11,000 times.
That's the case that Bill Maher says is the end of free speech.
That's the case that gets all the way up to the New York Times right away, you know, like instantly.
All of that, just have that in mind.
The fucking nonsense that is the case you and I have heard so many times.
That's just a couple of students, maybe a few more.
At most, it'll be like a slight amount of public outcry, a professor who never gets fired.
And that'll be all the free speech.
This already is someone in the government calling for this person to lose their job over protected speech.
Not in the classroom.
Yeah, not in the classroom.
And not just like calling on him to be fired.
He followed it up with saying, quote, I understand that the professor is likely to be terminated from his position, just based off of his conversation with the university president.
Again, the day after that this happened.
And it's not just, you know, like folks that are trying to be governor in South Dakota that acted in this way.
The actual governor of South Dakota, Larry Rodin, posted to Facebook that when he read Professor Hook's first post, quote, I was shaking mad.
The Board of Regents intends to fire this University of South Dakota professor, and I'm glad.
Yep.
Wow.
So the governor, the current and the guy running.
who is also the speaker of the house in South Dakota.
So just so 80% of their whole government right away.
You said that was like the next day.
Yes.
It's hard to even want to continue, but we have so much more.
Like already case closed.
It's so, this is so much fucking worse than any example ever that they ever had of free speech violations on the other side.
It gets worse.
At noon the following day, September 12th, the dean told Professor Hook that the board intended to terminate his contract and place him on administrative leave.
So we're talking, you know, less than 48 hours after this post, probably like, you know, maybe 36 hours that he was on administrative leave and that they would be making a decision on the termination.
And there is thought that the USD president, you know, the board of regents is really in charge of making these decisions, but on information and belief, Professor Hook says the USD president, who was reached out to specifically by that speaker, the house who's running for governor, approved and helped implement the board's decision to fire Professor Hook.
So that's basically the premise of his complaint.
The causes of action that he's looking into, again, not a law show, but just so folks know what we're kind of talking about here.
Unconstitutional retaliation against core political speech is the only claim.
But again, the request for relief is a temporary restraining order, a preliminary injunction and a permanent injunction restraining defendants from retaliating against Professor Hook in any way based on his Facebook posts, restraining them from continuing his administrative leave and restraining the defendants from holding a personal conference with him on September 29th.
I don't know why exactly he's pushing back on the personal conference because they shouldn't have a fucking personal conference.
Yeah, you shouldn't get a personal conference for protected speech on a personal account.
You know, if you said something in the classroom, sure, you got to look into that.
But like, okay, so just to get the facts right, he wasn't exactly fired yet, but they put him on leave.
They took him out of his job.
With intent to terminate.
With intent to terminate.
And they said, we're basically doing this.
You're going to be fired.
Right.
Yep.
Then he had to, he had to go to court.
He had to hire a lawyer.
This cost a lot of fucking money.
Yeah.
He had to do all that to hopefully get a judge to stop them from this obvious violation of free speech.
This is the other thing that's like so critical about these stories now is what's happening here.
Not only is it crazy that this is happening.
It's crazy that people are doing this, like these fucking foot soldiers everywhere in these universities, public universities, that they're doing this, but it's also that it's so blatantly illegal.
Like it's, it would be one thing if it was, again, sometimes we talk about, well, this is just people's opinion and, you know, someone might get fired for, like there is, I think, debate to be had over someone getting fired for their views.
And I think there have been times where it's like, well, certainly there have been times where our side has been happy that someone who's revealed to be like a bigot, even if it's in their personal time, gets fired.
Now, that I think is way different when you're talking about a private employer versus the government.
That's just true.
Like it just is legally and I think ethically a little different.
But I would certainly say that it gives me pause to think about like, it's possible that we should have been a little more appreciative of our right to say stuff privately and not get fired, even from a non-state.
But that, that all aside, this is the state.
So this is just blatantly illegal to do, like just absolutely blatantly illegal.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And in their memorandum in support of their request for a TRO, et cetera, they specifically call out a case back in the 80s where it says even advocating for the assassination of the president, light years away from anything Professor Hook said or ever would say is protected.
On March 30th, 1981, a clerical employee in a Texas county constable's office, upon hearing of the attempt to assassinate President Ronald Reagan, said, quote, if they go for him again, I hope they get him.
She was fired.
This case went up to the Supreme Court.
The Supreme Court held that her First Amendment right to speak outweighed her law enforcement employer's interest in terminating her.
It ruled that her firing violated her First Amendment right to speak.
I mean, I see that.
I'm like, okay, case closed.
Like, it's done.
The Supreme Court's already weighed on this.
What are you guys doing?
Yeah.
Later in this memorandum of support, it says, by contrast, Professor Hook never has and never would suggest or promote violence as a solution to anything.
His post angered the wrong people, Governor Rodin, Speaker Hansen, the Board of Regents, and some who share their political views.
But the state may not punish speech it dislikes.
And it goes on, you know, to make their case.
I wanted to share some of the material from the memorandum in opposition to the motion.
So this is filed by the university.
Yeah, curious what they have to say in defense.
Right.
And that's another thing.
You'll hear me talk about it, but another hallmark of these fake cases, like Professor Kilbourne, who, if, you know, if you listen to the Free Thought Day, you probably heard a recap.
Those episodes were, gosh, how long ago were those episodes now?
The beginning of the show, basically.
I think it was like episode 10 through 16, I want to say.
I quit.
We're too old.
Can't believe it.
But anyway, in those cases, there's often like major disagreement on facts because one side is lying and the other side is not, usually, when it comes to these fake ones.
Right.
But this, I wonder, like, are they going to say like, oh, no, we didn't fire him for that or we didn't do anything?
Like, is it, if it's going to be anything like those, if the both sides of the political spectrum are the same, is it going to be like, oh, no, he actually didn't get fired?
It turns out he assaulted a student, you know, or something.
Is that what we're going to see?
Well, let's see.
Their first line of defense right now from this is that at the time that his Facebook page was, you know, they could look at it.
I guess maybe he took it down completely.
I'm not sure.
It was very publicly advertised that he was a professor at the University of South Dakota.
So it just says, you know, professor of art at University of South Dakota is listed as part of his details.
Don't think that makes it.
Okay.
Yeah.
They say, in short, Professor Hook chose to use the same social media platform where he advertises himself to be a professor at the University of South Dakota to decry the murder victim.
Is advertising yourself?
Yep.
Wow.
Yep.
Then they say, you know, that they received hundreds of calls and messages to the Board of Regents and the university commenting negatively regarding the comment or calling for the removal of Professor Hook.
Among those messages included one from the Speaker of the South Dakota House of Representatives.
So they recognize that and a social media message from Governor Rodin's account was also made.
So they're using the very free speech violation as a justification for the free speech violation.
Yeah, they basically said you took over our problem is we, the state, have to violate this guy's free speech rights because someone else from the state called and said we should.
So yep.
And then their other piece of defense here is that we've only served a notice of intent to terminate and quote, there is no certainty at this time that he will be terminated.
Yeah.
And we should note that in all fairness, because law stuff, this is a motion about the temporary restraining order.
So it's not like they're arguing necessarily on the merits, but they do, they do have to argue on likelihood of success on the merits, right?
I mean, that is one of the things that you would have to consider.
So it's somewhat of that.
But okay, so their defense is like, well, we're not even necessarily going to fire him.
That's not really anything.
Yeah.
And he has not exhausted any administrative remedies is what I'm saying.
Some stupid technical point they're trying to make.
All right.
Yeah.
They try to argue in this further down that there is no irreparable harm.
It says in this case, there is a very clear legal remedy if his claim is indeed found to be meritorious, assuming that he's terminated.
Reinstatement and back pay.
This case is pleaded as a retaliation case is their position.
Plaintiff is alleging that he's being retaliated against for prior protected speech in an employment context.
Case law does not support the finding of irreparable harm and issuance of a TRO in employment law cases where reinstatement and back pay serve as sufficient legal remedy, as is the case here.
Okay, well, not a legal show.
What happened next?
Yeah, so they're pushing back on all of this stuff.
You know, they attempt on the likelihood of success of the merit.
That feels very weak.
I mean, I think rather than doing a legal analysis now, we will be able to just say what the judge said.
Yeah, let's skip to the order.
And I think what the judge put together here is really well done, really comprehensive.
To determine whether Hook's speech is entitled to First Amendment protection, the court must first determine whether Hook spoke as a citizen on a matter of public concern.
A public employee's speech is not protected by the First Amendment if it owes its existence to the employee's professional responsibilities.
It goes on to say, the court concludes that Hook spoke as a citizen and his speech was on a matter of public concern.
While at home and off work, Hook made the first post on his private Facebook page.
Defendants note that Hook's Facebook page identified himself as a professor at the University of South Dakota, but this alone does not show that a post made on his personal Facebook account is speech that arises from Hook's duties as a professor.
Yep.
They had a TRO hearing, you know, where each side argued kind of their position on this for the judge.
And the judge writes in this order, at the TRO hearing, defendants did not dispute Hook's assertion that his Facebook post constituted speech on a matter of public concern.
Based on the above, the court concludes that Hook's speech is entitled to First Amendment protection.
Okay, pretty easy.
So now the question is: have defendants produced evidence to indicate that the speech had an adverse impact on the efficiency of the university's operations?
Which I imagine, like, I don't know if that would like get them out of jail, but like maybe that would be like the start of something, like some sort of case.
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
I think that would be fair.
But the judge says at this stage, defendants have failed to put on evidence that Hook's speech had an adverse impact on the efficiency of the university's operations.
Well, what didn't they say?
They got some phone calls.
Yeah, they got some phone calls.
What does the judge make of that?
But quote, mere allegations the speech disrupted the workplace or affected morale without evidentiary support are insufficient.
That's from a preceding case.
Oh, well, they should have done better then.
Defendants have not demonstrated that there was any disruption to on-campus activities, Hook's teaching lessons, or the university's operations.
And without more, quote, such vague and conclusory concerns runs the risk of constitutionalizing a heckler's veto.
Hmm.
Sure seems like it.
I agree with that judge.
It was probably appointed by Reagan or something.
Yeah.
The court last concludes that defendants took an adverse employment action against Hook and that Hook's speech was the quote substantial or motivating factor in defendants' decision to place Hook on administrative leave and notify him of their intention to fire him.
Hook must show that he suffered a material change in the terms or conditions of his employment and that the change would chill a person of ordinary firmness from continuing to engage in activity protected by the First Amendment.
At this stage, the court concludes that Hook has a fair chance of prevailing and showing that defendants' intention to terminate his position as a professor materially changed the terms and conditions of his employment and that the change to his employment status would chill a person of ordinary firmness.
Yada yada yada.
It says further, within two days of his first post, Hook was notified that the South Dakota Board of Regents intended to terminate his tenured position as a professor at the University of South Dakota.
The September 12th letter that he received, that notice, itself identifies Hook's social media post as the single piece of evidence it used to support its decision to terminate his position.
So not like, well, actually, he threatened a student and did the stuff that Kilbourne did.
It was that single post that he took down three hours later after he posted it.
They said, we're going to do unconstitutional stuff because of this one thing.
And then the judge is like, it seems like you're going to do unconstitutional stuff because of that one thing and you're not supposed to do that.
Yeah.
Case closed.
Wow, we're really good at covering legal stuff.
This is.
And so between, you know, that single post and then the pressure from a politician to fire this person, the judge basically said, yeah, you have a fair chance of prevailing.
Looks like to me, I'm going to grant the requested TRO.
Now, looking at the docket to see kind of how this turned over, you know, like he got the temporary restraining order and there was a little bit of back and forth, some extension requests and things like that that, you know, aren't interesting.
But we did have a notice filed on October 6th.
And so I pulled that up and it just says that on October 3rd, this is a notice filed by Philip Hook, the professor.
On October 3rd, defendants wisely abandoned their notice of intention to terminate Professor Hook for his First Amendment protected speech about a matter of substantial public interest.
Defendants have returned Professor Hook to his full duties and have not punished him in any way, nor do they seek to punish him in any way.
So Professor Hook has received the relief he sought in this lawsuit, which makes this case moot.
Professor Hook hereby dismisses it without prejudice.
It sounds like a settlement or something.
Yeah, they work something out.
You know, I really hope that he says something different if they actually settle.
Because like what I would want to have happen is that this guy gets like attorney's fees or something, you know?
I would hope so too.
Yeah.
So I don't know if that's part of the, it could have been part of the settlement.
I don't, I forget, again, not a lot of shit.
So I don't know if it like would say something different if it were settled versus if he's like, oh, it's moot.
So yeah, it's a notice of dismissal as opposed to like a notice of settlement.
So I'm guessing maybe unless they just work something out.
So the plaintiff, the guy just filed that saying, I got everything I wanted, right?
Yeah.
I haven't seen any coverage regarding, you know, any financial impact, but I agree that just having to go through all of this and pay for an attorney, you know, who knows how much it costs.
But yeah, I'd be pretty pissed if I was just on the hook for that because somebody was violating my First Amendment.
Yeah.
So I don't, a minor question, just legally procedurally, I hope this means there's a possibility he got like, you know, back pay and stuff, but I don't know.
You know, I'm not sure.
I think there probably is that possibility that they just work something out informally.
And we're like, hey, do you, as a school, want to try to litigate this loser of a case because you obviously fucking violated my First Amendment rights?
The judge already said you're going to lose, basically.
How about you give me a few bucks and reinstate me or whatever, you know, take away this show?
I hope that's what happened, but I worry with our stupid legal system and just the unfairness of the world that who knows if they just got away with fucking with this guy's life and finances for no reason.
And that's that.
I don't know.
Yeah.
Yeah.
There's unfortunately no way for us to know here unless Professor Hook wants to write to the show and let us know.
If anyone knows him, let them know.
Yeah.
So now we are going to pivot to Indiana.
This is Ball State University.
And this is actually a case that was written about in the New York Times.
Wouldn't you believe it?
Oh, that's good.
Yeah.
So I'll share a little bit from how the New York Times covered it.
And then, of course, we have the complaint.
The ACLU of Indiana is representing this individual.
Not fire?
Not fire.
No, nope, not fire.
They must have missed this one.
So this is Suzanne Swartz.
She's not a professor at Ball State University.
She's a staff member.
She served as the director of health promotion and advocacy within the Division of Student Affairs at Ball State University.
And most of her time as a result was then spent developing health and wellness programming.
You know, she had staff that reported to her.
After Kirk died, she posted herself.
You know, a lot of people were re-sharing posts that other people wrote, but Swartz posted herself and said, let me be clear.
If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can't be friends.
Oh, by the way, I should mention she's very Catholic.
So we'll get a little bit of that in here.
His death is a tragedy, and I can and do feel for his wife and children.
I believe in the resurrection.
And while it's difficult, I can and do pray for his soul.
Charlie Kirk's death is a reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed.
It does not excuse his death, and it's a sad truth.
The shooting is a tragedy, and I can and do feel for a college campus experiencing an active shooter situation.
The deaths of Melissa and Mark Hortman, the children shot and killed in Minneapolis last month, and the children shot in Colorado today are all tragedies that also deserve your attention.
Charlie Kirk excused the deaths of children in the name of the Second Amendment.
That's what she posted.
Here's another point.
You might think, and it could have been possible that these cases we're going to talk about, it could have been possible that while ultimately these are likely just based on the premise and what's happening here, going to be violations of the First Amendment, they could have been cases that would at least be more understandable.
Like if it was somebody, it was a professor who just was like, good, fuck that guy, glad he's dead, waiting for the next one, just a matter of time.
Like if it's somebody who's like, now go after his family.
Yeah, like said some really shady stuff, you know, like the run of the mill MAGA after Paul Pelosi was attacked.
Yeah.
You know, truly despicable stuff.
I mean, Charlie Kirk after Paul Pelosi.
Despicable stuff.
Yeah.
That just absolutely beyond the pale.
I'm not saying those two things are equal.
I think it's different to root ill among on fascists versus, you know, fucking the husband of a Democrat.
You know, like, I think those are categorically different, just morally speaking.
But like, it could have at least been, okay, well, these are some pretty far out borderline calling for violence kind of stuff.
And so it'd be kind of understandable.
But just note how nice these are compared to the president, the fucking president.
Yeah.
Like compared to people in power on the right, whenever anything happens to someone on the left, like Paul Pelosi or whatever, just run to the mill.
This is, this is like, hey, feel for his family.
Really sorry that there was an active shooter.
Like empathetic stuff, considered stuff.
And it's not even like, well, some of them are, you know, there may be a few that's a little bit more, I guess, like around the edges.
Yeah, there might be some that are a little more gleeful, still freedom of speech, by the way.
But for the most part, it's like, yeah, this sucks for a lot of reasons, but I'm not really sorry he's gone.
Like it's mostly that.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So she posted that about eight o'clock again on her own private Facebook page on her own personal time from her own personal electronic.
Okay, so why do we even know about it?
We shouldn't even fucking know about it.
And then she went to bed.
Then she woke up.
Someone, someone took a screenshot and then not only like shared it to a number of like, you know, various social media sites trying to get the mob going, it was also submitted to a portal that Indiana's attorney general, Todd Rokita, maintains called Eyes on Education.
And from Okay, it wasn't just for this thing.
It was for, you know, like any sort of gender ideology being pushed on kids, right?
It was created for that purpose.
And from what I've read in this, it sounds like Suzanne's case was the first one submitted under the Charlie Kirk situation.
And I'm just scrolling through this.
You know, I'm on their, that website right now, that portal.
And they have this subsection called Charlie Kirk submissions, and they list the school corporation that is affiliated with the various issues that have been submitted.
And then this column that's called documentation.
So you can go through and you just like click through and I see Suzanne Swartz right there.
It lists her title, Director of Health Promotion and Advocacy.
You click on it and it's literally a picture from a social media post that shows her information from the staff directory at Ball State and then her post that I just read to you.
And so you scroll through and it's just a bunch of those.
It's, you know, math teachers from a high school.
You have elementary school teachers in here.
You have substitute teachers, a cheerleading coach.
Wow.
So wait, this is that database thing or that?
Yeah, it's just a web page.
Submit to the portal and then they post to the portal.
The folks on the other side.
Vote now on the next person whose freedom of speech we want to fuck with.
Like just, yeah, it's like a Patreon poll.
Whose freedom of speech should we ruin using the apparatus of the government?
Sound up.
Yeah, I mean, it's pretty bad.
There's, you know, law professors on here.
There's I.T. user support specialist and student government representative.
Yet another thing, yet another difference between the fake bullshit ones and the actual real ones.
It's not even like, well, okay, this person's teaching kids, indoctrinating kids.
Really?
The IT specialist?
Yeah.
Here's one of the professors that's called out on there that we're not going to be talking about today, but it's in response to someone else's post.
And this law professor just said, glad it was Kirk that, quote, died for the Second Amendment rather than some school kid.
That's all they said.
And it's on this portal as someone who has like stepped beyond something that that's beyond the pale for Indiana's attorney general.
Now, we don't know necessarily like if there are consequences for all these people or do we?
We don't, but they are being listed here.
So, I mean, I didn't have to create an account.
I didn't have to do anything.
I'm not, I'm not a citizen of Indiana.
I just went to the webpage and it's all right there for me.
So if I wanted to go harass somebody, this is a really, really easy way to go about doing that.
It's a really convenient tool for harassment.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So I had mentioned that, you know, she went to bed and she woke up and it had been kind of spread across social media.
We talk about this all the time, but of course it's libs of TikTok.
Libs of TikTok was behind a huge portion of spreading this, particularly in Suzanne's case.
In the New York Times piece, they wrote, Ms. Swartz got her first message 19 minutes later after it was posted by Libs of TikTok.
Elon Musk posted about it.
So did Rudy Giuliani.
And then Todd Rikita, the attorney general, called it out on X, called her comments vile, quote, should make people question someone's ability to be in a leadership position.
Again, he's the one that maintains the Eyes on Education portal.
And then she received a voicemail message where they said that they knew where she lived.
They said her home address and they said, quote, that she should get the same treatment as Charlie.
The post from Libs of TikTok for this ended up getting nearly 7 million views.
Wow.
That post I read to you, which was kind and nuanced and understanding and also like guided by faith.
She's a practicing Catholic.
Her faith is very important to her.
I thought it was very clear in that post when I read it, but that was vile and vulgar to them, which is just incredible to me.
So when those things were happening, Suzanne said to the New York Times, quote, I had the hardest time moving around my house that morning.
My brain was not processing things.
Space and time became kind of their own thing.
I wanted to vomit.
And five days later, she was fired.
Wow.
Yeah.
In the complaint that the ACLU filed, as they spelled out what Suzanne's interactions were with Ball State University, they said that, you know, when she went to work on Monday, September 15th, there was a meeting that was scheduled where her supervisor was there, a peer that she was allowed to invite for support and the head of employee relations.
The head of employee relations asked about her safety because, as I said, she was receiving these messages that were pretty dangerous and concerning.
And then the head of employee relations indicated, this is from the complaint, that the university would be looking into whether this would be considered speech made by Ms. Swartz in her private or employee capacity.
And neither she nor anyone else discussed the possibility that she would be subject to discipline at all.
So then she did her job as usual.
And the next day, did her job as usual on the 16th.
She had a half day scheduled that day already because of some medical needs.
And then around noon on September 17th, her supervisor informed her that they were required to attend a meeting with employee relations at 4 o'clock that day.
They?
The supervisor and Ms. Swartz, that they both needed to go to this meeting.
He was not informed about the details of the meeting, except that she was not permitted to bring legal counsel and she would likely not be required to speak.
So at that 4 o'clock meeting, the head of employee relations informed her that her employment was being terminated.
That was it.
Wow.
Yeah.
Signed by the university president who said, quote, I have decided to terminate your employment with Ball State University effective immediately.
The letter indicated that the sole reason for her termination was that Facebook post.
She was informed that there was no possibility of challenging or appealing the termination and the meeting lasted five minutes.
Wow.
Yep.
Understandably, she's suing.
Now, when she was fired and let go, and that was shared across social media as, you know, a win for the right, Rokita, the attorney general, said, quote, Ball State's legal analysis was also 100% correct here.
What legal analysis?
Yeah.
What legal analysis?
No idea.
Just that she was fired.
Legal analysis that we do what we want because fascism.
Also, I'm so concerned because like I feel like if there even was legal analysis, it's entirely incorrect here.
And I would be concerned for the state of Indiana being represented by an attorney general who doesn't know the law.
I would be really, really concerned about that.
And as far as I can see, this is yet to be resolved.
As I mentioned, the ACLU filed a lawsuit September 26th.
I haven't seen any update here yet, just that the ACLU specifically issued a statement.
People do not forfeit their First Amendment rights when they are hired by government institutions.
Public employees are free to speak on matters of public concern so long as they are speaking as private citizens.
Swartz's Facebook post clearly meets these criteria and her termination was unconstitutional.
Yeah.
And a story there.
That sounds like better legal analysis than the fucking attorney general.
Yeah.
I know, I know.
So if I missed it and maybe she's, she's been reinstated to her position, that's wonderful.
But I haven't seen that.
So as far as I know, still currently fired.
Life disrupted.
Students' lives disrupted.
You know, like all this stuff.
I mean, it's so frustrating how real these ones are and how fake the other ones are.
All right.
Now let's go to a high school example.
Okay.
I'm going to assume you found this one on firethefire.org.
Oh, no.
Legal defense fund.
No.
Court listener.
Yeah.
Let's see who's representing this individual.
Iowa State Education Association.
Well, that's good.
Yeah.
This case is Melissa Crook out of Iowa.
And this complaint is for a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction, permanent injunction, and declaratory relief.
So what happened in this case?
Well, Melissa Crook is a high school English teacher and she is being threatened with the termination of her teaching contract because of, again, a private off-duty comment on Facebook.
Now, what's interesting here is that it's not a post that she wrote.
It was on a family member's post.
She wrote a comment.
Wow.
A family member had posted something and Crook wrote, quote, he is a terrible human being, terrible.
I do not wish death on anyone, but he, him not being here is a blessing.
Yeah.
Just the fucking Orwellian shit going on here.
It's dark.
Someone thinking like, yeah.
You can't comment on their family members post without losing their job.
Yep.
So someone saw that, click through, figured out her employer, I guess, and started calling, but and screenshotted it.
Who knows?
But man, this one was shocking to me because again, like we've talked about cases where it's been a post that they've written.
We talked about Joshua Bregge where it was a post that he shared that he hadn't even written.
And then again, now we're talking about a comment within a thread that someone is tracking down and wanting to destroy your life.
So somehow that comment made it to this news outlet that is characterized in this lawsuit as right-leaning.
It's called the Iowa Standard.
They reported on her comment within her family members' Facebook post.
They identified her by name and as a teacher working for the district.
They reported on her comment on her family members post.
Yeah.
Yep.
They said, quote, unbelievably, this is a third Iowa teacher who has allegedly made such a comment regarding Charlie Kirk's assassination.
This teacher works in the Creston School District.
Okay.
When she woke up the next morning, she went back into that feed when she saw like, oh, people are taking this way out of hand.
Let me see if I can address this in the Facebook post.
Let me see if I can apologize for using my First Amendment right.
Okay.
Yeah.
So she tried to clarify that she did not wish anyone death and apologized.
And then she did an additional post on her own Facebook page where she said, I want to clarify a statement I made yesterday.
I do not condone violence or the killing of people you disagree with politically or otherwise.
That was never my intent.
That is not who I am, nor what I believe.
I believe strongly in the freedom of speech, which also means I can disagree.
I do not treat others poorly or wish them any harm because we do not agree.
I'm actually very open and accepting of different people with different ideas.
The point I was trying to make is that he has marginalized a lot of powerless people, creating polarized political discourse.
I believe all people have the right to their own beliefs, including me.
I'm sorry I have offended people in this community believing that I condone killing others.
I did not think he should be killed.
After further review, I should have thought more about how I chose to post my thoughts, how it would sound.
I take responsibility for the poor wording of my post.
I just imagine you feel desperate in that moment, you know?
So just remind us one more time.
What was her statement?
He is a terrible human being, terrible.
I do not wish death on anyone, but he, him not being here, is a blessing.
Oh, that's fine.
No apology necessary.
Yeah.
So wouldn't you know it?
We get some Republican politicians in Iowa that now are chiming in.
Iowa House Speaker Pat Grassley posted on Facebook and said, I've been made aware of social media posts by teachers in Iowa praising the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
This hate has no place in our state and certainly does not belong in our schools.
My expectation is that each school district will follow the proper protocol to investigate these posts and reprimand the posters appropriately.
Individuals with this depravity cannot continue to hold a position with any level of influence over our children.
If appropriate action is not taken, you can trust that the Iowa House Government Oversight Committee will address this issue and take action to root out this hate from our schools.
So then the superintendent called Melissa Crook to an investigatory meeting on September 11th, 2.30 p.m.
So just the day after, like the afternoon after she posted, he asked her multiple times about her meaning and intent in using the term blessing as part of that comment within that family member.
Well, I can help.
It's good that he's dead.
It's actually the world is better.
Not saying he should have been killed necessarily or that it's not necessarily a better world that he was killed because that clearly created such a backlash.
But if you were given the option of a world with Charlie Kirk and without Charlie Kirk, I think you'd be an idiot if you picked the one with Charlie Kirk.
Yeah.
She can use that quote if she needs to.
At the conclusion of that meeting, so the afternoon after her post, he placed her on administrative leave.
And keeping in mind, she probably didn't say what I just said.
She probably said closer to what she said.
Yes.
Like, oh, I didn't mean that way.
You know, it doesn't matter.
Yeah, I don't believe in violence, et cetera.
Yeah.
So then just a couple of days later, September 15th, she was called to a second meeting with the superintendent.
There was no new information from the district, except she was aware of statements released to the public about the district investigating, you know, like really bland kinds of things, but she did not have any additional information.
And what she found out at that meeting was just that the investigation had concluded and that the comment on Facebook, quote, resulted in his office receiving more than 111 emails and 140 calls with the vast majority of them asking for her termination or requesting to have their children removed from her classroom.
I don't totally buy that it's actual parents of kids.
It's people like masquerading as some, but yeah, I highly doubt that as well.
Since we know there was an organized effort based on databases created by these fascists to make this happen.
And then the report that they issued as part of the conclusion of this investigation said that Crook's comment, quote, resulted in the need to increase law enforcement presence out of fear for our students, staff, and school safety.
Right.
Sort of like if you hire, I don't know, like a gay teacher and then a bunch of homophobes are like going to attack your school.
Can you be like, well, you know, blame it on the gay teacher fire person because that's a disruption to the school.
So about a week after that, she received her official notice of recommendation to terminate the contract.
And the notice listed nine reasons for just cause to terminate Crook, all of which related to her private speech on a matter of public concern, all related to that comment that she left on a family member's post regarding Charlie Kirk.
The notice stated, quote, your post was publicly available and generated hundreds of complaints, including many requests from parents for you not to be their children's teacher and resulted in threats to safety of students and staff, causing a significant and adverse impact on district operations and the educational process.
So thankfully, because of unions, her union representative, a couple days after that, went to the police department and the sheriff's office to see about any law enforcement report related to increased presence of law enforcement at the district.
And, you know, from September 11th and then on.
And the dispatcher who was working with this union representative to track that down was unable to find any report related to the district.
And then trying to track down additional information, the sheriff stated to the union representative that his office received only one call related to any comment by a teacher.
And that was early in the morning, the day after her post, September 11th.
And the call did relate to her school district that was, you know, that she was affiliated with.
But the sheriff confirmed that no report was ever filed as a result of the call.
And he did receive a request later to talk to the superintendent.
And then the superintendent informed him that there had been a rumor among students of possible violence toward the school because of a teacher's post.
The superintendent informed the sheriff that the district investigated the rumor and it was not credible, but they wanted law enforcement just to be safe, quote, out of an abundance of caution and quote, because you never know.
So blaming it on Melissa Crook when the superintendent said, oh, no, there's, it's not a credible threat, but we'd still like to have it just in case is remarkable.
Now, is this, where were they doing it?
Was this, did they lie in a lawsuit?
They lied in the notice of termination letter.
So not necessarily a lawsuit, but some lawyers may be like, hey, maybe.
Yeah.
So then the union representative continued to speak with other employees of the district.
I want to clarify.
Is this a normal union that sucks or is this Ryan Walters union that really is going to do things for teachers?
No.
No, I just wanted to check.
Yeah, this is like an actual union.
Weird.
So the union representative didn't stop there after he spoke with law enforcement to figure out, okay, what are these claims about increased law enforcement presence on campus because of the threat that Melissa Crook brought to the school?
He spoke with other employees of the district who said that there was little to no disruption to their work or the educational environment because of her comment.
More than one employee indicated that any disruption that occurred was because now they had reduced lack of coverage for the work of the English department.
And students kept asking when she would be back because not only was she their teacher, she was also a dance coach.
So they were totally rad one that probably wouldn't know.
Exactly.
They wanted to talk to her.
And then a number of employees also said the presence of law enforcement was actually disruption and that because they were informed there was no actual threat, they questioned why are they here then for that period of time.
So again, we're looking at the violation of her First Amendment rights to her freedom of speech.
This was pending a hearing.
I don't see, again, that there is an outcome here.
So as far as I can tell, we're just kind of waiting again to find out what's going to happen, all stemming from a comment that she left on her family members' Facebook post.
What you're saying is a teacher's life is upset, students' lives potentially upset.
Bunch of money going to be spent trying to defend her right to free speech over nothing.
Yeah, pretty much.
I guess the last thing that has happened is the temporary restraining order that she called for in that has been granted in part.
So otherwise, we're just sort of waiting.
That's the other thing about the court system is who knows how long it takes.
It takes forever.
Yeah, it's not good.
And that's all money and time and stress.
And it's all you can think.
I mean, you and I know from just experience, it's all you think about while that's happening.
And so your experience of life and family and joy is all reduced because of this other looming thing that's just been taking over your entire life.
All right.
That's where we're calling it here, but we've got even more cases.
There's no end to them.
I know.
We've only done like a little bit.
Like we've done a peek inside of the impact.
We can't even get through all of it in one episode.
So not even close.
We got nice healthy chunks.
Two healthy chunks.
Oh, I'm kind of bringing that over from Gabble Gabble.
Yeah, I guess that's all.
I mean, we chunk it.
It's a whole network.
It's a chunk network.
All right.
Thanks so much for listening, everyone.
And there's much more to come in part two of this actual free speech crisis.
Hey, share it around.
Please support the show.
Patreon.com slash WhereTheres Woke.
Share it if you can't support it or do both.
That's the A plus.
That's the extra credit.
All the above teachers pet.
Thanks so much.
Next time on Where There's Woke, another probably teacher getting fucked over.
