SJUSD Employee Placed On Leave For Social Media Posts Following Charlie Kirk’s Death

The San Jacinto Unified School District Tuesday announced that an employee of the district had been placed on non-disciplinary administrative leave pending a full investigation into social media posts following the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. 

Superintendent David Pyle said in a letter to the community posted on social media that the decision was made “in accordance with district policies and procedures and consistent with the advice from legal counsel.”

“We appreciate those in our community that have reached out to share concerns about recent social media posts by an SJUSD staff member following the murder of Charlie Kirk,” Pyle wrote. “Your voice matters, and we want to be clear that we do not condone or tolerate hate speech in any form, rather we stand for peace and mutual respect.”

The letter went on to say that the district was “committed to fostering a safe, respectful and inclusive learning and working environment,” for its students and employees and would “clarify guidelines regarding staff conduct in response to controversial topics.”

“At the same time, we must and do honor the First Amendment rights of our employees to share their personal view on matters of public concern when speaking as a private citizen,” Pyle wrote. “We want to be clear: the personal comments made by this employee do not reflect the values, standards or mission of our district.”

The district declined to answer emailed questions from The Riverside Record, including one to clarify what non-disciplinary administrative leave is and another about whether there were any other employees who had been placed on leave for this reason.

David Snyder, executive director for the First Amendment Coalition, said in an interview with The Record that situations like this are complex, and comes down to whether or not the comments were made in the employee’s personal or professional capacity.

“That is really a very fact-intensive analysis, and it can be complicated,” he said, noting the various ways in which people exist on the internet. “Social media can really kind of scramble things and make it difficult to determine whether the speech is in their private capacity or in their capacity as a teacher or as a public employee generally.”

If a district were to sanction an employee as a result of a social media post that was made in a personal or private capacity, Snyder said the employee might have a First Amendment claim of unlawful retaliation, but was not sure if being placed on leave pending an investigation would rise to the level of a sanction.

“I do think that, at a minimum, it sends a chilling message to other teachers, to other employees, that you better watch what you say, or you may be called out,” he said. “It certainly has a chilling effect, when a school district sort of publicly calls out an [employee] for their comments on social media.”

And while the district did not name the employee, describe the social media comments or disclose where the employee worked within the district, the announcement came days after 412 Church Temecula Valley Pastor Tim Thompson posted a video across his social media pages about social media comments he said were posted by a teacher in the district.

“There needs to be a massive disciplinary action taken against this teacher,” he said in the video. “In my opinion, she should be fired. We don’t want people like this taking our money, making a living by us, so that way she can have this type of influence over our children.”

Thompson urged those who watched the video to “make some noise on this,” by sharing the video and contacting the school district via email and phone, putting both in the caption of the post. 

Thompson is also the principal officer for Inland Empire Family PAC, which supports conservative school board members, runs the nonprofit Our Watch and hosts the podcast of the same name, which had Kirk on as a guest in 2021. He was not immediately available to respond to a request for comment from The Record.

Snyder said Thompson’s video calling out the social media post and the post itself, if it was made in a personal or private capacity, were both “totally protected speech.”

“The First Amendment protects all of our rights to speak out, even when that speech is ugly,” Snyder said. “It also protects the rights of people to criticize that speech, so when [Thompson] says … ‘I disagree with the speech, I think the speech is terrible, I think you ought to go call this teacher’s employer,’ that speech, too, is protected.”

However, he said, the impact of targeting people in that way was “harmful to free expression.”

“I  think it has the effect of making people more mindful of what they’re saying,” he said. “And, to the extent that silences people and keeps them from speaking out freely about matters of public interest, I think that’s problematic.”