Hope McMath and her attorney, John Phillips, speak at a new conference about the case against her teaching license on Tuesdasy, Sept. 22, 2026. | Megan Mallicoat, Jacksonville Today
Published on September 22, 2026 at 8:51 pm
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A Duval County teacher should not lose her teaching license for social media posts last September after the murder of conservative media personality Charlie Kirk, an administrative law judge says.
Hope McMath, who taught AP Art History at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, was pulled from the classroom a year ago after Duval Schools and the state of Florida began simultaneous investigations of two posts she made to her Facebook account the evening of Sept. 10, 2025.
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The district concluded its investigation months ago but kept McMath out of the classroom while the state’s investigation continued.
McMath is not in the clear yet, though; her case will now go to a state-level body called the Education Practices Commission for a final review. A date for that hasn’t been announced yet.
McMath also is not back in the classroom. After her contract ended over the summer, it wasn’t renewed — something McMath says she first learned from opposing attorneys during the hearing in July.
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During the hearing, judge Garnett W. Chisenhall heard testimony from McMath, a state investigator, a district investigator and Douglas Anderson Principal Tim Feagins.
Both investigators said they had found no evidence that students saw McMath’s posts and had no reason to think the posts had disrupted operations at the school or the district. Feagins told the judge the only complaints he received were directed at McMath’s removal from the classroom.
McMath said her absence left 50 students without a qualified teacher for months for a college-level course, prompting some to drop the class.
“Students weren’t talking about it. Teachers weren’t talking about it. Parents weren’t talking about it,” Feagins said at the hearing. “They were aware because it was in the news, but nobody ever brought it up as far as a concern of her being in front of their children.”
Feagins told the judge he would like to have McMath back on his teaching staff.
McMath and her attorney, John Phillips, have long maintained that her speech is protected by the First Amendment. In his 22-page order, Chisenhall noted that his role is only to rule on whether she violated Florida law and not to “adjudicate the First Amendment argument.”
The complaint Kamoutsas filed against McMath’s teaching license alleged five statute violations. Chisenhall rejected each assertion.
Speaking to reporters Tuesday, Phillips said the judge’s order will support the case he’s making in McMath’s continuing federal civil rights suit against the Duval School Board and others.
“Just to be clear — just so that (Duval County Public Schools) hears me loud and clear, so (the Department of Education) hears me loud and clear, so the defendants hear me loud and clear — what did he say? ‘There is no competent evidence to support a finding that Ms. McMath brought her or the educational profession into public disgrace or disrespect,” Phillips said. “That is a ruling of a judge.”
Other teacher cases
McMath’s case is one of several still continuing around the state. The Education Department hasn’t said exactly how many teachers it investigated over social media posts after Kirk’s death, but in a deposition for McMath’s case a state official said the number is “about 50.”
Kelly Brock-Sanchez, who was a teacher in Clay County, was fired after posting about Kirk’s death. Then-Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas posted on social media that he would seek to revoke her teaching license. The administrative law judge assigned to her case is expected to issue her ruling next month.
State records show teachers in Martin County, Lee County and Sumter County also are challenging discipline they faced after Kirk-related social media posts.
A federal case
McMath, an artist and activist who also runs the Yellow House art gallery and spent seven years as director of the Cummer Museum of Art, first filed the federal civil rights suit late last year and amended the complaint on Monday. It names several defendants, including Kamoutsas, three Duval School Board members (Charlotte Joyce, April Carney and Melody Bolduc) and Moms for Liberty.
The original complaint for the state’s investigation came in the form of a Facebook screenshot that includes Carney’s avatar in the corner. The district cites an email from Moms for Liberty Duval as its original complaint. A document that included numerous screenshots of McMath’s social media posts was attached to that email.
“I don’t think it gets spoken of enough, but in the original complaints that went in about me, probably 50% of what they were complaining about was the art that I make, the art that I share, the art that I curate — and that’s serious,” she said during a news conference Tuesday. “When we’re going after teachers, librarians, artists, journalists, that’s serious. For me, that’s the big-picture part of it.”
Phillips called some of the district’s policies about teachers’ speech unconstitutional in that they allow “selective enforcement.” Teachers’ First-Amendment rights outside of the classroom should be protected, he said.
“This isn’t and never was a case about economics,” Phillips said. “Certainly there’s economic damages, but this is important.”
McMath said the “targeting” of a few teachers results in a “chilling effect on hundreds of teachers.”
She’s not sure if she’ll get to return to Douglas Anderson to teach Art History, though she wants to. Her case took so long to resolve that the next school year started without her, and for the first time in years, the school isn’t offering AP Art History this year.
“I think the real legacy of this work and this complaint and our sort of fuel for going forward — the legacy piece — is to change the rules in which teachers are being attacked and targeted,” McMath said, “and where political groups and political entities are kind of weaponizing their power to attack public education and the people who sort of lead the charge around that.”
