Some won settlements up to $1.9 million; others unlikely to prevail
Gerald Bourguet, who wrote about professional men’s basketball for the sports outlet PHNX Sports, told the BBC a year after his firing that he had struggled to find work. In September 2025, the 35-year-old said, he and his wife had just bought a house with a pool and welcomed a baby boy. Hours after Kirk was fatally shot on September 10, 2025, while speaking on the campus of Utah Valley University, Bourguet posted online calling Kirk an “evil man” and suggesting he had dedicated his life to hateful causes, and criticizing his supporters for not speaking out about school shootings. Screenshots of his posts went viral. He was fired, his address was exposed online, and he said he began receiving threatening text messages. Concerned for their safety, Bourguet, his wife, and their four-month-old son fled the state; months later they returned only to sell the house and relocate permanently. A year later, he said he does not regret what he said, but acknowledged: “My life will never be the same after this.”
The BBC described Kirk as a divisive figure in U.S. politics. For many on the political right, he was charismatic and had a unique skill in making conservative ideas appeal to young people. For his opponents, the broadcaster reported, his comments on a wide range of issues — including race, immigration, gun control, and gender identity — were deeply offensive.
“I had seen the way that people were talking about this person — kind of eulogising him and lionising him — and it bothered me based on a lot of the things that he had said,” Bourguet told the BBC from a new location the broadcaster agreed not to disclose. “At age 35, I am having to start over in a lot of respects … I wouldn’t wish this on my worst enemy.” PHNX Sports did not respond to the BBC’s request for comment.
In the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, most people kept their feelings to themselves, or shared them with close friends, the BBC reported. On polarized social media, people rushed to laud, or denounce, the controversial activist. Some called the criticisms posted hours after his death tasteless. Others called for swift action, arguing they were callous, mocking, and could even incite further violence.
The dismissals followed a campaign of pressure from senior U.S. officials and conservative commentators. Vice President JD Vance said days after the assassination: “When you see someone celebrating Charlie’s murder, call them out. And hell, call their employer.” Right-wing commentator Laura Loomer, who has nearly 2 million followers on X, warned Kirk’s critics to “prepare to have your whole future professional aspirations ruined.” White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told the BBC that “anyone who engages in or endorses political violence or assassination culture must be condemned in the harshest terms possible.”
South Carolina state Representative Jordan Pace, a Republican, went further. He had previously called for defunding state universities that did not act against employees who commented on Kirk — a post that was reshared by President Donald Trump. “Cancel culture can be good, it’s bad when it’s applied in the wrong ways,” Pace told the BBC. “If you are someone who celebrates political assassinations and the murder of an innocent man with two young children in a way that many people did, then yeah, that’s an appropriate way for society to function, to shame those people.”
Critics on the left, the BBC reported, argued there is a difference between criticizing Kirk and celebrating his death, and accused some conservative leaders of hypocrisy for embracing the same accountability mechanisms many of them had previously condemned as “cancel culture.”
The firings spanned a wide range of workplaces and reasons. Tennessee anthropology professor Tamar Shirinian was suspended and later dismissed for a Facebook comment saying “the world is better off” without Kirk. A Delta Air Lines flight attendant was fired after posting “good riddance” in response to Kirk’s killing; Delta declined to comment. An Office Depot employee was fired for refusing to serve a customer who wanted to print flyers for a Kirk vigil; Office Depot did not respond to a request for comment. Darren Michael, an Austin Peay State University theatre professor, was fired after sharing a 2023 news article that quoted Kirk’s controversial remarks on gun control. Brittney Brown, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist, was fired after she reposted a meme satirizing Kirk’s position on gun violence in light of his own shooting. “I was absolutely gutted,” Brown told the BBC about her firing. “It was like the entire world just completely flipped on its head in a moment.”
In the year since Kirk’s killing, dozens of lawsuits have been filed across the country by people fired for their comments about the activist, arguing their terminations violated their rights to free speech, the BBC reported. The suits have led to substantial pay outs in some cases. Brown, who earned just under $40,000 a year, agreed to a $485,000 (£355,000) settlement — about 12 times her annual salary. Michael was reinstated by Austin Peay State University, which in January agreed to pay him $500,000 to settle his legal claims; the school did not respond to a request for comment. The University of Tennessee agreed to pay $1.9 million to resolve Shirinian’s lawsuit, though she will not be reinstated and has agreed not to reapply for future positions there. The University of Tennessee and Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission did not respond to the BBC’s requests for comment. An arbitrator ordered The Washington Post to rehire, with back pay, opinion journalist Karen Attiah, who had been fired for online posts saying in part she would not engage in “performative mourning for a white man that espoused violence.” Several other lawsuits remain pending, the BBC found.
Most of the legal actions have been pursued by employees of government institutions or unionized workers, who have some free-speech protections. Most U.S. private-sector employees, by contrast, work under at-will contracts and can be fired without cause. As an at-will employee of a private company, Bourguet is unlikely to prevail in a lawsuit challenging his dismissal.
Even those who won settlements described them as incomplete. “All I wanted was my job back,” Brown told the BBC. “How much taxpayer money did they waste on this when I barely made $40,000 a year? So no, it does not feel like justice.” Shirinian told the BBC she too had wanted to return to her job but felt a legal case could be a lengthy affair. “I took a settlement because this allows me to move on with my life,” she told the BBC. “The one small regret that I have is that I will not see my day in court and justice will not be served in that way. But I think that the number of the settlement actually speaks to that anyway.” A year after his firing, Bourguet said he has struggled to find work and has started a podcast he doubts will pay the bills. “I have accepted that that life is over and that I need to start a new one,” he said, adding that leaving the country is now on the table.
Despite the personal and professional costs, none of the workers interviewed by the BBC said they regretted the posts themselves. “I have a right to say what I want to say,” Brown said. “They are the ones that should have the regrets, not me.” Shirinian apologized to the University of Tennessee days after her suspension. She told the BBC her comment was “an emotional outburst” that was not intended to be public and that she regretted the tone used. “I don’t regret the sentiment, however … the sentiment was that I am not sad. And I refuse to be made to feel like I have to be sad that someone who was so hateful was killed,” she said.
Bourguet drew a distinction between the substance of his comments and their consequences. “I don’t regret that line of thinking because I think it’s important to push back on things that are steeped in hatred,” he said, referring to Kirk’s political message. “I don’t regret what I said. I don’t regret the way that I said it. I do regret the ripple effects that came from it and the way that they impacted me, my career, my family, and my son.”