Brittney Brown, a biologist with Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, has signed a $485,000 settlement agreement after the state fired her for a social media repost tied to conservative activist Charlie Kirk after his death, according to the case described by the Associated Press.
The settlement reached with agency directors covers backpay, damages and attorney costs, and Brown agreed as part of the deal not to seek future employment at the agency, the report said. Florida officials did not respond immediately to a request for comment, according to the Associated Press.
The firing occurred in September, after Brown reposted a meme on her personal Instagram account that included a claim about Kirk’s reaction to children being shot in classrooms. Brown then sued the agency seeking reinstatement, saying she struggled to find other work because the commission was the regulatory body for her bird-conservation research specialty.
Before Brown’s termination, she worked for the commission for about seven years studying shorebirds and seabirds on Florida’s panhandle, according to court documents cited in the report. The lawsuit and settlement also fit into a broader pattern described by AP: workers in both the public and private sectors lost jobs over comments about Kirk’s assassination on a Utah university campus, with other lawsuits pending.
Kirk’s supporters, the report said, combed social media after the Sept. 10 shooting for posts they viewed as celebrating his death. The AP account said some conservative influencers pledged to target people who made light of the killing, and a social media account shared identities and workplaces of some users.
Brown’s lawsuit, AP reported, said that Libs of TikTok posted about her and that she was fired the next day. The report said Brown also alleged that someone alerted Libs of TikTok about her termination about 10 minutes after it happened and before it was made public.
Carrie McNamara, an attorney with the ACLU of Florida, called the settlement a “hard-won vindication” and said it sends a message that Florida officials cannot punish speech they dislike. McNamara said, “The First Amendment does not disappear when someone accepts a government job.”
AP also reported that Brown’s former supervisor, Habitat and Species Conservation Director Melissa Tucker, had claimed Brown’s post generated hundreds of formal complaints and caused significant disruption. Discovery in the case later showed the agency received about 50 complaints, and a U.S. District Judge, Mark Walker, imposed sanctions on Tucker after finding she exaggerated the amount and did not correct the record, according to the report.
The settlement arrives as other cases tied to Kirk’s death continue to unfold across state lines. In Tennessee, for example, a retired police officer jailed over Facebook jokes about Kirk’s assassination reached a settlement reported this week for $835,000, and the broader cluster of firings and lawsuits indicates the legal fight over workplace discipline and online speech remains active.