The lawsuit alleges the TEA violated teachers' First Amendment rights by targeting them for protected speech on their personal social media accounts. The investigations have resulted in consequences ranging from written reprimands and administrative leave to doxxing and termination.
"We're suing TEA today for violating our members' First Amendment rights and targeting them for their protected speech," said Zeph Capo, Texas AFT president, during a press conference announcing the lawsuit.
The TEA policy was announced in September 2025, just days after Kirk's assassination. Since then, educators have faced serious consequences for comments they made on their personal, private social media accounts about the controversial nature of Kirk's previous statements.
"The educators under investigation commented on the controversial nature of Charlie Kirk's previous statements on their personal, private social media and outside of their official capacity," Capo said.
Randy Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, joined Capo at the press conference to show national support for the Texas educators.
"Educators don't lose those rights, those fundamental rights when they teach in classrooms," Weingarten said. "In fact, most educators go into teaching because they believe in America and America's fairness and America's goodness and America's democracy."
Current status of investigations
The status of educators under investigation varies depending on their local school districts. Some have been returned to classrooms, while others remain in temporary reassignments until their investigations are cleared. Some have received reprimands stating they violated district policy despite posting on their own private pages during their personal time.
Of the original 350 complaints filed, the TEA has narrowed the investigations to approximately 95 cases that remain open. Between 50 and 100 educators have contacted Texas AFT seeking advice or support regarding their situations at the school level.
"Many of them did get cleared at their local level, but they still have a level of uncertainty until the state cases are completely adjudicated or completely processed through," Capo said. "They don't know what could happen next."
Most cases at the district level resulted in findings that educators did nothing wrong, but almost all were required to report the incidents to the Texas Education Agency, creating ongoing uncertainty about potential state-level consequences.
The plaintiffs in the case remain anonymous due to fears of invasion of privacy, doxxing and further retribution. Several union members have already experienced privacy invasions, and the organization doesn't want to expose them to additional personal risk.
Capo attempted to reach out to Commissioner Mike Morath multiple times to discuss the policy and prevent attacks on union members, but never received a reply from the commissioner.
"We didn't want to have to take this to court," Capo said. "But he should know by now that we will leave no rock unturned when it comes to protecting our members and their constitutional rights."
The lawsuit comes as Texas continues to lead the nation in instances of gun violence, creating additional stress for educators who are already dealing with the emotional well-being of students in their classrooms.
"All of this time, all of this energy could have been focused on making everyone safer rather than political cheap political points that do nothing but make our entire environments worse," Capo said.
Lawsuit seeks policy reversal
The lawsuit argues that the TEA policy is fundamentally flawed because it asks school districts to punish public school teachers for exercising their First Amendment rights. The policy's overly broad language makes it nearly impossible for educators to know what is and isn't acceptable, according to the complaint.
"The only real criterion, if you can call it that, is whether Commissioner Marra personally finds a post reprehensible," Capo said.
The union will continue pursuing the lawsuit even if all remaining complaints are cleared, arguing that the policy itself violated constitutional rights and created a chilling effect on free speech.
"This shouldn't have happened this way, and I hope it's a lesson that every Texan leaves out of this, and particularly our government, that there's got to be a better way to address and deal with this issue," Capo said.
Privacy concerns and social media targeting
The investigation process involved what union leaders described as a "witch hunt" where politicians encouraged people to seek out and report public employees who made any statements about Kirk's assassination.
"It was in fact a witch hunt in many cases," Capo said. "It was weaponized."
Many educators had separate social media pages - one tied to school-related contacts and another completely private. Even those with private settings found their posts were screenshot and reported after politicians brought attention to the issue.
"Most of our members never thought about changing the settings on their Facebook pages," Weingarten said. "They intended it to be to their own social media, but they never thought about it."
Broader impact on education
Union leaders expressed concern about the chilling effect the investigations have had on classroom instruction. Beyond the 95 educators still under investigation, thousands more are now hesitant to address current events in their classrooms.
"It's not just the 95, it's the 9,500 others that are in schools right now thinking twice about what they say when any type of current event happens in their classroom," Capo said.
Weingarten compared the situation to McCarthyism, saying she had never seen anything like it in modern times.
"I've never seen something in modernity - it looks like what happened in the 1950s in the McCarthy era, but I've never seen anything in modernity be something like this where somebody said look for, find if somebody said something you don't like about Charlie Kirk, report them so we can fire them," Weingarten said.
The lawsuit seeks an injunction to stop the commissioner from enforcing the policy, have the policy retracted, end all related investigations, and issue a new letter to superintendents clarifying that the TEA does not mandate such actions.
Weingarten emphasized that only two states - Florida and Texas - issued memos welcoming complaints about teachers' social media conduct following Kirk's assassination. Every other state focused on helping students and communities process the traumatic event.
"We denounced Charlie Kirk's assassination. We denounced violence after Uvalde. We denounce violence," Weingarten said. "But today, and what happened in the next few days wasn't about violence or denouncing violence. It was about muzzling the expression of constitutionally protected nonviolent speech."
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