This story was reported and written by our media partner Capital News Service.
Educators and state employees are scared they may lose their jobs over personal opinions and beliefs expressed on social media following the assassination of Charlie Kirk. College students and higher education advocates are calling to protect speech on campuses.
Kirk was shot on Sept. 10 at Utah Valley University. He was visiting the campus as part of the American Comeback Tour to “debate conventional narratives promoted by leftist academia” at universities, according to the Turning Point USA website.
Right before he was shot, the conservative podcast host was debating gun rights and mass shootings, which included accusations of “too many” transgender people being school shooters. Approximately less than 0.1% of the mass shootings that occurred since January 2013 were committed by transgender or nonbinary people, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center’s Factcheck.org.
In the days following Kirk’s assassination, more than 145 people across the nation lost their jobs due to comments related to Kirk, according to The New York Times. At least 60 educators experienced retaliation for comments, according to another NYT article.
Several Virginia school districts opened investigations for comments made by education employees in reaction to Kirk’s murder, including in Accomack, Chesterfield and Orange counties as well as Newport News, according to the Virginia Mercury.
Chesterfield County Public Schools board member Dorothy Heffron garnered national attention when she posted on social media: “Call me old-fashioned, but I remember when we used to be okay with shooting Nazis.” It was made days after Kirk’s death, although it does not mention him by name.
Heffron announced her resignation after Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears, the Republican nominee for governor, posted a screenshot of the school board member’s alleged Instagram story on Sept. 12. It is unknown how the post came to Earle-Sears’ attention.
Gov. Glenn Youngkin called for Heffron’s immediate resignation on social media.
Heffron, whose term was not up for reelection until 2028, will step down on Dec. 31 to ensure a smooth transfer of power.
School board members are elected officials, chosen to represent the values and interests of their community. The position may not have the same protection as the speech of an education employee, where mere disapproval of speech is not a test for termination, according to Brendan Vanderveen, who works for the free speech advocacy group Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.
Heffron was reached out to for comment but did not respond. CCPS was reached out to for comment and did not respond.
The day after the controversy, the Virginia Department of Education superintendent of public instruction Emily Anne Gullickson ordered local school divisions to investigate any public social media comments that celebrated or condoned political violence like Kirk’s assassination.
Teachers and administrators who violated local school policy should be reported to the Board of Education for licensure revocation, Gullickson stated. And, the VDOE would pursue state action against schools that do not hold their personnel accountable for such comments, Gullickson.
The Virginia Education Association, a union of educators, responded by stating it condemns violence, but that teachers deserve due process.
“While we agree that educators should model professionalism, we cannot support a blanket condemnation that fails to distinguish between private personal expression and professional conduct,” the VEA stated.
Youngkin, who recently donated $100,000 to Turning Point USA to help it establish Virginia chapters, called on Virginians to observe a moment of prayer and reflection after Kirk’s assassination.
“All Virginians, no matter their beliefs or background, are the inheritors of this legacy of free speech and civil debate,” Youngkin stated in reference to the nation’s founding documents.
However, what is protected under the free speech umbrella can be shaped by ideology, according to Kelly Benjamin, spokesperson for the American Association of University Professors.
“We are witnessing the most aggressive, fanatical ideological crackdown on freedom of speech we have seen since McCarthyism,” Benjamin stated. “This is an unprecedented dangerous moment for freedom of speech and academic freedom in America.”
The AAUP condemned the murder of Kirk and all violent acts committed on college and university campuses in a released statement.
The organization also noted its alarm about the “rash of recent administrative actions to discipline faculty, staff, and student speech in the aftermath.”
“At a moment when higher education is threatened by forces that seek to destroy it and its role in a democratic society, the anticipatory obedience shown by this rush to judgment must be avoided,” the statement concluded.
Virginia’s free speech laws governing educational and cultural institutions state no public institution of higher education shall abridge the constitutional freedom of individuals to speak on campus, and that constitutionally protected speech must be outlined and accessible with a reporting process established for disruption.
But FIRE’s current ranking of college free speech in Virginia is 64.1%, having decreased from last year, as 3 out of 5 speech controversies reported on the site were all from 2025, according to the organization.
Administrative support and political tolerance categories received an F.
Virginia Commonwealth University’s current ranking is No. 5, at 60.3%, of seven universities.
The University of Virginia is the highest-ranked school in the state, because its “written policies do not seriously threaten student expression.”
VCU graduate student Jesse Pellow called on his school to help protect faculty and staff in the current politically charged climate, in a letter submitted to the Commonwealth Times student newspaper.
Pellow believes that even 1,000 students signing a petition to help protect teachers would get VCU’s attention.
“If VCU gets a petition saying, ‘You better protect your professors against this organization,’ and there are a thousand signatures on there, that's going to say something,” Pellow said.
Capital News Service is a program of Virginia Commonwealth University’s Robertson School of Communication. Students in the program provide state government coverage for a variety of media outlets in Virginia.