Hope McMath outside the Duval Schools headquarters at a rally held Oct. 7, 2025. | Megan Mallicoat, Jacksonville Today
Published on May 26, 2026 at 11:44 pm
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A Jacksonville teacher accused of making a “grossly immoral” social media post should not be punished, her lawyer argues in a new filing — and the supporting documents suggest a Duval School Board member’s screenshot might have triggered the state’s investigation into her speech outside the classroom.
Hope McMath’s lawyer, John Phillips, says the teacher’s Facebook post on the day Charlie Kirk died that included the phrase “karma’s a b****” — is protected under the First Amendment because she made it “on her personal account, on her personal time, on a matter of public concern, coinciding with the death of a national political figure.”
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Vanessa Zboreak, a constitutional law professor at Jacksonville University, says teachers’ speech outside the classroom may be offensive, “But that’s not sufficient to show that there’s been disruption in the classroom or of the workplace environment. Free speech includes the right to say things that are offensive or disagreeable, or that we just don’t care for.”
Supreme Court precedent from Pickering v. Board of Education gives First Amendment protection to government employees’ speech — unless their speech causes an actual disruption.
Records show that in sworn depositions, the state’s primary witnesses testified that McMath’s social media posts did not disrupt her classroom nor did she bring politics into her classroom, where she taught AP Art History at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts.
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“(Education) Commissioner (Anastasios Kamoutsas) has not just failed to meet his burden,” Phillips wrote. “He has, through his own witnesses, conceded he cannot meet it.”
With the motion, Phillips is asking an administrative law judge to end the state’s inquiry into McMath — and to sanction the Education Department by making it pay her attorney’s fees.
Targeting ‘despicable comments’
Following the Sept. 10 shooting death of conservative media personality Charlie Kirk last fall, the Florida education commissioner announced the state would investigate teachers who posted “despicable comments” about the murder to social media.
Kamoutsas, who is expected to leave his post to become president of Polk State College next month, wrote in a memo to superintendents across the state, “I will be conducting an investigation of every educator who engages in this vile, sanctionable behavior.” He also posted the missive on X on Sept. 11.
Statewide, the state opened “about 50” such investigations into teachers, according to testimony in McMath’s case from the state’s lead investigator. McMath is one of an unknown number of Florida teachers still progressing through the state-level discipline process because of posts they made in the weeks following Kirk’s murder.
Employees of other state agencies also faced repercussions — like a biologist for the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, who recently settled with the state for nearly a half-million dollars after she was fired for reposting an Instagram meme critical of Kirk.
Records raise questions about origin of complaint
The evening of the shooting, McMath, a part-time teacher who also operates the Yellow House art gallery, posted to Facebook: “Karma’s a b**** – and she heard all your speeches when you proudly proclaimed that you didn’t give a s*** about other people’s lives.”
McMath was removed from her classroom on Sept. 15 amid a district-level investigation into her social media activity. The state’s investigation ran concurrently with the district’s — unusual, because state investigations are typically the result of a district referral. Duval Schools closed its investigation in December, giving McMath a warning about using profanity on social media.
What triggered the investigations to begin with is murky, too, and case records raise questions about whether a school board member was behind one complaint.
Duval Schools attributed its investigation to a complaint received Sept. 12, 2025, from a generic email signed “Moms for Liberty Duval.” Public records received by Jacksonville Today show Superintendent Christopher Bernier received that email and forwarded it to staff with instructions to “add this one to the case and advise.” Bernier also replied to the sender, thanking them for the report and calling McMath’s case “an ongoing investigation.” When Jacksonville Today first reviewed the records, it was unclear what report might have predated the Moms for Liberty complaint.
Records received since then show the state received three prior complaints about McMath’s social media posts, one of which was a Facebook screenshot that appears to have been taken from the account of Duval County School Board member April Carney.
In the state’s case file, that screenshot appears to have been taken from an iPhone open to the Facebook app. It contains McMath’s “karma” post, as well as another post in which she shared a political cartoon depicting Donald Trump’s accuser E. Jean Carroll holding his severed head. Visible on the lower right corner of the screenshot is the user’s profile photo — the same profile photo that Carney was using at the time.
A public records request to Duval Schools by Jacksonville Today for the image within Carney’s correspondence and other files returned no records. A similar request to the education department was acknowledged but has not yet been filled.
Carney, who is not seeking reelection, declined to comment because of ongoing litigation. McMath has named Carney, along with four other school board members, the district, the education department, Kamoutsas and Moms For Liberty as defendants in a separate federal civil rights lawsuit.
