A Clay County public school teacher fired for social media posts about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk will get her day in administrative court in August.
Kelly Brock-Sanchez was an Exceptional Student Education (ESE) teacher at Ridgeview Elementary in Orange Park when her career and life were upended following an intensely negative reaction to posts she placed on her private Facebook page under the pseudonym “Kelly Steele Magnolia” on Sept. 10, the day that Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at Utah Valley University.
“This might not be the obituary we were hoping to wake up to, but this is a close second to me,” she initially wrote.
A subsequent post stated, “Charlie Kirk had 2 kids and STILL SAID gun deaths were the cost to keep the 2nd Amendment…this philosophy led to his own death becoming an acceptable cost…one of the top five Trump surrogates. One less evil person on this planet.”
Retribution was swift.
Brock-Sanchez was attending an Individualized Education Program human resources training early the next morning at a school district training center when she was handed a letter informing her she had to leave the campus immediately because she was being put on administrative leave by the Clay County School District.
She was stunned, not having a clue about why she was being removed. She then went on her Facebook page and saw she that had about 50 notifications. She then went to the Clay County School District Facebook page and saw dozens of negative comments posted next to a previously published photo on that site of herself with other instructors.
“I only read the first two and they were nasty, and I had no idea what this is about, and I deleted them all. This was public and I didn’t want my school to see this,” she said in an interview with the Phoenix.
She discovered her name was trending on X, where she did not have an account. That’s where she saw her post had caught the eye of conservative activist Scott Plesler, who forwarded it to his 2 million-plus social media followers. She says she then received a call from her daughter who lives in St. Louis who told her she been contacted via her Instagram account with a message that allegedly said, “If your mom doesn’t renounce what she said about Charlie Kirk we’re going to kill you and your sister because we want your mom to suffer the same way that Charlie Kirk’s children are suffering.”
According to the Clay County School District, Ridgeview Elementary School principal Courtney Schumacher was notified at 2 a.m. on Sept. 11 about the “extremely high volume of social media notifications, emails and messages from employees and friends.”
The next day, the district was contacted by the Office of Professional Practices Services of the Florida Department of Education, requesting information about Brock-Sanchez’ social media activity, per a request by former Department of Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas.
Her attorney with Florida Education Association and her brother, at the time a deputy sergeant in the Leon County Sheriff’s Department, advised her to leave Clay County immediately, “because they thought for sure I would be killed,” Brock-Sanchez said.
On the evening of Sept. 11, Kamoutsas sent a public letter informing all school districts that he planned investigations of every educator who “engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior.”An investigation of Brock-Sanchez’s posts then began, although she had no idea at the time. That’s because the state informed her via certified letter, which she didn’t receive until nearly a week later.
On Sept. 22, 11 days after Kirk’s death and her social media posts, Kamoutsas said he had found “probable cause” to seek the permanent revocation of Brock-Sanchez’ educator’s certificate. He said she had violated three statutes and two rules in the Florida Administrative Code.
“This teacher’s comments were grossly immoral, reduced her effectiveness in the classroom, failed to protect the health, safety and welfare of students, and did not distinguish her personal views from that of a public educational institution,” he wrote. “Accordingly, I am seeking a permanent revocation of this teacher’s license.”
He went on to say that “holding educators accountable for speech that celebrates violence in schools, is not a violation of free speech. It is a necessary step to uphold the standards of the teaching profession and the safety of our schools.”
In a subsequent interview with Action News Jax he added, “That educator made a vile, sanctionable comment that celebrated the violence that took place on a school campus, which is really appalling to me.”
(Brock-Sanchez said that ultimately her attorney sent a cease-and-desist claim to the attorneys with the Office of Professional Practices Services to stop the Education commissioner from continuing to mention her in published remarks.)
‘Thoughtless words’
In the administrative complaint signed by Kamoutsas, he noted that the Clay County School District had received more than 500 complaints about Brock-Sanchez and “her thoughtless words.” He added that the “overwhelming response” to her post necessitated increased security on the campus, “costing the district money,” but also “may have served to amplify the discomfort of the students.”
Following their investigation, on Sept. 25, Clay County Superintendent David S. Broskie recommended to the school board that Brock-Sanchez’ contract be terminated effective Oct. 2, which it was.
In January, the Clay County School Board reached out to the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings to assign an administrative law judge to conduct a hearing on Brock-Sanchez’ fate. That hearing is now scheduled to take place Aug. 13-14 via Zoom.
Concurrently, Brock Sanchez has filed a lawsuit against Kamoutsas in his official capacity as commissioner of education for declaratory and injunctive relief and damages in the U.S. Middle District Court of Florida in Jacksonville. She says her “hostility” to Kirk “was constitutionally protected core political speech,” and that Kamoutsas should have known his actions in seeking sanctions against her license constituted a violation of her First Amendment rights.
Kamoutsas’ attorneys have repeatedly filed motions with the federal court to dismiss the case, arguing Brock-Sanchez lacks standing because it is the Florida Education Practices Commission, and not the education commissioner, that holds power to suspend or revoke a teaching certificate. They asked for the case to go into mediation, but none of those efforts have been successful. The case is now set to go to trial in November 2027.
(Kamoutsas was selected in early June to become president of Polk State College. He is scheduled to take over that position on July 6).
Brock-Sanchez is just one of approximately 600 Americans who were punished in some fashion for making what were perceived to be derogatory remarks about Kirk in the immediate aftermath of his death, a Reuters investigation revealed in November.
Several other Florida instructors lost jobs last year after making remarks perceived as derogatory about Kirk after his death, and the state has been on a losing streak in these cases. All told, the state has opened “about 50” investigations into Florida teachers regarding their comments about Kirk, Jacksonville Today has reported. (The Florida Department of Education did not respond to a request for the exact number).
But momentum is shifting towards those fired by the state for their Kirk social media posts.
On June 17, Administrative Law Judge Jodi-Ann Livingstone told the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings that the Martin County School Board should rescind the suspension and termination of Matthew Theobald, a social studies teacher for the past 17 years, for three posts he made about Kirk on his mother’s Facebook page while he was off duty from his job. Among those comments, he called Kirk a “racist, misogynistic, fear-mongering, xenophobic new Nazi” — a remark he says he stands by.
There’s also the case of Brittney Brown, a Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission biologist fired after reposting on social media a statement critical of Kirk. In late May, she signed a $485,000 settlement of her lawsuit that covered backpay, damages, and attorney costs.
“All I wanted was my job back,” Brown said in a press release following the announcement of the settlement. “I see no leaders amongst FWC ‘leadership,’ but that’s to be expected when a state agency becomes the governor’s personal puppet show. The ‘Free State of Florida’ only provides First Amendment protections to those in favor with the current administration, while the rest of us are expected to fall in line or risk losing our livelihoods.”
First Amendment Concerns
Brock-Sanchez’s federal lawsuit seeks a declaration that being punished for constitutionally protected core political speech and any inappropriate or controversial aspect of her social media post is “irrelevant” and protected by the First Amendment.
Public school teachers certainly have First Amendment rights, says Clay Calvert, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and professor of law emeritus at the University of Florida.
“Those rights of free speech, however, are not absolute, and they must be balanced against the government’s interest — in this case, the elementary school where she taught,” he told the Phoenix.
“So, you’re balancing her First Amendment rights of free speech in this to talk about a matter of public concern, a public figure — which [Kirk] clearly was a public figure and his assassination was clearly a matter of public concern. You’re balancing that against the ability for her school to teach students effectively and efficiently, and the danger there that the school claims is that some students may feel uncomfortable in her class and some parents will feel highly uncomfortable by having their children sit in their class, given her comments.”
“Everyone has the right to speak about a figure, positively or negatively, even if that viewpoint offends others,” said Aaron Terr, director of public advocacy for the Foundation of Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “The idea that speech can’t be punished simply for causing offense is one of the most basic First Amendment principles, so there are certain circumstances when the government can discipline an employee for personal, off-duty speech, but the employer would have to show that the speech is so disruptive to its operation that it outweighs that employee’s strong interest in speaking about public issues.”
Brock-Sanchez’s post was intended for a private audience made up of Facebook friends. But, as was the case in several other situations, that post made it to the outside internet world.
“I think that if it’s a private message, that tilts in favor of the employee in the legal analysis, and there’s also the question of how much weight courts put on alleged disruption when it’s just coming from people outside the community, for example, people who have been ginned up by a politician or a social media influencer,” Terr said.
“And so, a court can consider actual disruption. If the government is able to fire someone just because they receive a bunch of angry emails egged on by a social media influencer, that effectively creates a heckler’s veto. It allows the loudest, angriest people in the country to decide who’s allowed to be employed by the government based on their viewpoint, and there are some courts who have recognized that sort of alleged disruption should get very little if any weight in the analysis, because it’s not really relevant to whether the agency is able to provide effective services to the public in the community that it serves.
“In other words, there’s a difference between, say, parents of students in a school district or staff members and administrators and other people within the school community and their reactions to the speech, versus people who don’t even live in the community or aren’t even involved with the school or the government employer in some way.”
Gun violence in schools
In interviews with the Phoenix, Brock-Sanchez said she had been going through significant trauma when her posts about Kirk went viral. She’d still been “very raw inside” about her fear that the breast cancer she had been treated for was going to return.
She also had concerns about gun safety, and was angry about Kirk’s position on the Second Amendment.
“I think it’s worth to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights. That is a prudent deal. That is rational,” Kirk said in 2023 during an event held by TPUSA Faith, a division of Turning Point USA.
“I was sick and tired of people having this platform with millions of people listening to them, day in and day out, saying, ‘It is fine to have an automatic weapon and it’s fine for people to die and not have a consequence of it,’ when I go to work every day not knowing if I’m going to come home,” Brock-Sanchez said. “And knowing that I could go to school and have to see a child be completely killed to the point where they’re shredded to death, and I want the rhetoric to stop.”
Those comments are not uncommon among teachers. A RAND Corp. study about school safety found that 22% of K-12 principals in the winter of 2025 expressed concern about being the victim of an attack or harm at their school. Forty percent reported similar levels of fear when surveyed in the fall 2024. A Pew Research Center survey conducted in April 2024 found that 59% of K-12 teachers were at least somewhat worried about the possibility of a shooting at their school.
‘Cancel Culture’ for who?
The rush to fire liberals who criticized Kirk in social media posts comes as the left stands accused of promoting a “cancel culture” — an irony that some say can’t be avoided.
Jake Hoffman of the Tampa Bay Young Republicans has served as a Turning Point USA ambassador for several years, a program for conservative influencers. He considered the posts critical of Kirk in “poor taste” and expressed surprise that Charlie Kirk was such a hated figure to the left.
He acknowledged a bit of “hypocrisy” among conservatives who want to cancel those who criticized Kirk, “but a lot of the feeling of people on the right is saying that, ‘Well, you cancelled us for this, this, and this, and you know what? It’s our turn now to cancel somebody.’ I think that’s what you’re seeing.”
Kirk’s shocking death prompted Florida Republicans to push for legislation to honor him during the regular legislative session this year. Lawmakers passed a measure (HB 33) renaming a road alongside Florida International University in west Miami-Dade County after the conservative leader.
But two other bills referencing Kirk failed to pass both chambers, including a proposal (HB 125) that would have designated Oct. 14 the “Charlie Kirk Day of Remembrance.” It passed in the House but never made it to the Senate floor
The legislative discussion on the House floor for that bill ignited some of the most intense and heated rhetoric of the session, particularly from Black female Democrats, who remained incensed about Kirk’s comment on July 13, 2023, criticizing in one sentence former MSNBC host Joy Reid, former First Lady Michelle Obama, Supreme Court Justice Katanji Brown Jackson, and former Texas Democratic U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee. “You do not have the brain processing power to otherwise be taken really seriously. You had to go steal a white person’s slot to go be taken somewhat seriously.”
After Kirk died, the quote was mistakenly altered in some circles to assert that Kirk had made the comment about all Black women, which wasn’t accurate. The real quote was still too much to bear for some critics, however.
“I understand that he has meant a lot to a lot of folks in this chamber, and I don’t want to overlook that,” Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell said on the floor in dismissing the bill’s legitimacy. “But I’d be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge that he has hurt a lot of people in this chamber.”
Rep. Chase Tramont, R-Port Orange, responded that the criticism of Kirk was the “typical greatest hits against conservative leaders — he’s divisive, he’s hateful, and, of course, racist” — adding that he wasn’t contesting that racism is real. “Of course it is. But it’s because I don’t believe that label should be applied to every conservative who simply believes that people should be judged and qualified based on the content of their character and not the color of their skin.”
Meanwhile, Brock-Sanchez waits for her administrative hearing, hoping she’ll win the opportunity to teach again.
“When I’ve applied for jobs, I started disclosing it, and I don’t get calls back. So, I can’t get a job,” she lamented to the Phoenix in early June. In a subsequent interview, she said she had picked up some work delivering meals for Door Dash and occasional babysitting.
A decision regarding her education license will likely come this fall, following the August hearings.
