The American Civil Liberties Union announced the settlement in a federal lawsuit it filed last year on behalf of Suzanne Swierc against Ball State University President Geoffrey Mearns.
Swierc worked as director of health promotion and advocacy at Ball State's campus in Muncie, Indiana, before she was fired last September. Ball State cited Swierc's private Facebook post about Kirk as the sole reason for her termination, saying it caused “significant disruption” to the campus.
In her Facebook post, Swierc referred to Kirk's killing as a “tragedy.” But she also called it a “reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed.” She wrote: “If you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can't be friends.”
Ball State's president said Swierc's post resulted in a flood of outraged phone calls and emails to the university. Some warned they would withhold donations and at least one parent said she planned to withdraw her children from the school.
“The reaction was extraordinarily damaging to our University’s reputation and image, and it was exceptionally disruptive to our mission and our people,” Mearns said in his statement.
Swierc was among a wave of workers who lost their jobs in both the public and private sector after posting social media comments and memes about Kirk’s assassination. And she isn't the first to win a legal settlement in court.
Earlier this month, a Florida state agency agreed to pay $485,000 to settle a lawsuit by a former state biologist who was fired after she reposted a meme that claimed Kirk wouldn’t care about children being shot in school.
In January, Austin Peay State University in Tennessee reinstated a professor and paid him a $500,000 settlement after he sued over his firing for posting a 2023 news headline that read: “Charlie Kirk Says Gun Deaths ‘Unfortunately’ Worth it to Keep 2nd Amendment.”
