University chancellor sued after employee fired for Charlie Kirk posts
Employee sues Ole Miss chancellor after being fired over Charlie Kirk posts
A former University of Mississippi employee fired in September over social media commentary she reposted about the assassination of Charlie Kirk has filed a federal lawsuit against the university's chancellor, claiming he violated her First Amendment rights.
Lauren Stokes, a former executive assistant in the University of Mississippi's development office, said she was terminated over a social media post she endorsed on her private Instagram account about Kirk, the right-wing activist and CEO of the political organization Turning Point USA.
University of Mississippi Chancellor Glenn Boyce fired Stokes over speech that is constitutionally protected, even if it was offensive, her attorney argued in a complaint filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court.
"A private employer might require its employees to conform to a point of view but the state acting through its public university cannot," wrote attorney Allyson Mills. "After all, today's policed are tomorrow's policemen. No state institution should purport to wield such power."
Boyce was sued in both his personal and professional capacities. University of Mississippi spokesperson Jacob Batte told Mississippi Today the university does not comment on pending litigation.
On Sept. 10, Kirk was assassinated while speaking on a college campus in Utah. That night, Stokes reposted to her Instagram account a statement made by another person that lambasted Kirk's views on issues like guns, abortion and race.
“For decades, yt (white) supremacist and reimagined Klan members like Kirk have wreaked havoc on our communities, condemning children and the populace at large to mass death for the sake of keeping their automatic guns," the statement said. "They have willingly advocated to condemn children and adult survivors of (sexual assault) to forced pregnancy and childbirth. They have smiled while stating the reasons people who can birth children shouldn't be allowed life-saving medical care when miscarrying. They have incited and clapped for the brutalizing of Black and Brown bodies. So no, I have no prayers to offer Kirk or respectable statements against violence.”
The post generated immediate backlash for Stokes, who deleted the post and apologized hours after publishing it. That same night, Boyce happened to dine at a restaurant owned by Stokes and her husband, the complaint says.
By the next morning, a social media firestorm had kicked into high gear, with conservative activists and even some state leaders drawing Stokes's post to her employer's attention. That mirrored similar episodes around the country in the days after Kirk's killing.
Journalists and teachers have been fired for their comments on his death, with several conservative activists seeking to identify social media users whose posts about Kirk they viewed as offensive or celebratory.
The University of Mississippi placed Stokes on administrative leave around 9 a.m. on Sept. 11, according to the complaint.
A little under four hours later, Mississippi State Auditor Shad White, a vocal critic of what he calls “woke” initiatives in higher education, posted about the episode on X.
“To Ole Miss, did an Ole Miss employee just repost this insane reaction to Charlie Kirk’s murder? Answer,” White wrote.
About an hour after that, university officials fired Stokes, according to her complaint. Then, 20 minutes later, Boyce released a statement that didn't name Stokes, but confirmed her firing and called her comments "hurtful" and "insensitive."
“The comments run completely counter to our institutional values of civility, fairness and respecting the dignity of each person,” Boyce said. “We condemn these actions and this staff member is no longer employed by the university.”
In Stokes's legal complaint, her attorney points out that the speech in question "related to a subject of obsessive news interest" and was not even hers, but someone else's that she reposted.
"By terminating Lauren for reposting the speech, the University says that Lauren is not allowed even to agree with a point of view held by a substantial portion of the nation," the complaint said. "Stated differently, the University says it gets to tell its employees what to think on matters of public concern. The interests in freedom of speech, indeed of thought, are extraordinarily high here."
Stokes said she has received death threats and bomb threats against her restaurant that forced it to close for two weeks. She is seeking damages, legal fees, and a declaration that Boyce violated her First Amendment rights.
The lawsuit was filed just over a week before Vice President J.D. Vance and Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk's widow, will speak at the University of Mississippi in Oxford on Oct. 29.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.