A woman who was fired by Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana after she caused “significant disruption” to the school with a social media post about slain conservative icon Charlie Kirk is reportedly set to receive $225,000 in a legal settlement.
Suzanne Swierc, who was fired from her position as Ball State’s director of health promotion and advocacy last September after she took to social media to attack Charlie Kirk following his assassination, will receive $225,000 to settle a free speech rights lawsuit against the school, her attorneys said on Tuesday.
Indiana-based American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Stevie Pactor said Swierc’s firing violated her constitutional rights because she was “speaking as a private citizen on a matter of public concern.”
“The First Amendment does not allow government institutions to retaliate in those circumstances, and this settlement reflects that,” Pactor added.
As Breitbart News reported, in the immediate aftermath of Kirk’s horrific and gruesome on-camera assassination, Swierc reacted by taking to social media to attack the Turning Point USA founder, declaring, “Let me be clear: if you think Charlie Kirk was a wonderful person, we can’t be friends.”
“Charlie Kirk’s death is a reflection of the violence, fear, and hatred he sowed,” Swierc added in her post at the time, before bizarrely asserting that the 31-year-old father of two had “excused the deaths of children in the name of the Second Amendment.”
Swierc then deflected to other unrelated news stories involving gun-related deaths and lectured the public — shell-shocked in the hours following Kirk’s assassination — by proclaiming that these previous tragedies “also deserve your attention.”
Notably, in response to Kirk’s murder, many leftists had chosen to deflect to other stories involving gun-related deaths, dismissing the reality that the Turning Point USA founder was blatantly targeted in a political assassination — murdered most likely due to the hateful and violent rhetoric spewed by the left, which falsely labels Kirk and other conservatives “fascists” until a deranged lunatic picks up a rifle.
On Tuesday, Ball State University President Geoffrey Mearns defended firing Swierc in a statement sent to campus leaders, explaining that the backlash over her social media post threatened harm to the school’s student enrollment and fundraising.
The university president added that the settlement’s “modest monetary payment” to Swierc was substantially less than what it would have cost to fight her lawsuit.
Mearns went on to remind campus leaders that Swierc’s post resulted in a flood of phone calls and emails to the school, with some outraged callers warning they would withhold donations, and at least one parent saying she planned to withdraw her children from the university.
“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 letter obtained by the Associated Press
Alana Mastrangelo is a reporter for Breitbart News. You can follow her on Facebook and X at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.