Turning Point USA Founder Charlie Kirk speaks at The Believers' Summit 2024 at a Turning Point Action event in West Palm Beach on July 26, 2024. | Lynne Sladky, AP file
Published on October 27, 2026 at 5:13 pm
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A Florida judge has recommended dismissing a misconduct case against a Clay County teacher for a post celebrating the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
In a ruling Oct. 21, Division of Administrative Hearings Judge Suzanne Van Wyk found the Department of Education could not prove Kelly Brock-Sanchez, an exceptional student education teacher at Ridgeview Elementary School, violated DOE rules by posting about the killing of Kirk on her Facebook page.
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On Sept. 10, 2025, the day Kirk was assassinated by a gunman while speaking at a Utah college, Brock-Sanchez posted: “This may not be the obituary. We [sic] were all hoping to wake up to, but this is a close second for me.”
The DOE moved to discipline Brock-Sanchez, possibly by revoking her teacher certificate. The agency argued the post was made on a “public” Facebook page “for all the world to see.”
But it wasn’t a “public” page, but a “private” Facebook page, where access to the site is controlled by the user and isn’t available to the general public.
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“Though someone decided to more broadly disseminate the post, (Brock-Sanchez) did not make that decision, and the consequences of posting to a ‘public’ account cannot be attributed to her,” Van Wyk wrote in her ruling.
READ MORE: Judge backs Duval teacher punished for Charlie Kirk posts
Brock-Sanchez had a private Facebook account under the name “Kelly SteelMagnolia.” While the profile picture is a photo of herself, her profile does not reflect the school in which she works and none of her Facebook friends are students, parents of students or coworkers, with the exception of one teacher with whom she worked in the teachers’ union, according to the ruling.
The post went viral after one of her 300 Facebook friends shared it more widely on other pages, the ruling says. The school’s principal said the response was “overwhelming,” as the institution received more than 800 emails and 300 posts on its Facebook page, some of which were threatening, and numerous calls and voicemails.
Fallout over Kirk comments
According to the ruling, some teachers left school early that day after threatening messages and phone calls, and there was “some fallout” among faculty and staff the day after the post went viral.
Even though the post created a disturbance at Ridgeview Elementary and affected daily activities, DOE claimed the Facebook post was public when Brock-Sanchez’s post was in fact private.
“The allegation that (Brock-Sanchez’s) post was made on a public social media account is a threshold allegation from which the rest of the material factual allegations flow — that it constituted grossly immoral conduct, that it caused parents to question her qualifications as an educator, and that the overwhelming response to her post necessitated increased security at Ridgeview which cost the District money,” the ruling states.
Unlike in civil court proceedings, rulings by the Division of Administrative Hearings are merely recommendations to state and local government agencies, which do not have to abide by the decisions.
Last year, numerous educators in the state, including school board members, posted on social media about Kirk’s death and were threatened with disciplinary actions by the DOE if the posts violated the state’s employee conduct policies.
“It has been brought to my attention that some Florida educators have posted despicable comments on social media regarding the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk,” wrote then-Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas in a memo the day after the shooting. “These few are not a reflection of the great, high-quality teachers who make up the vast majority of Florida’s educators. Nevertheless, I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior.”
Other teachers throughout the state who were disciplined for posts regarding Kirk have similarly had their cases heard by the Division of Administrative Hearings and have had their cases recommended for dismissal as well.
