Politico reporter Josh Gerstein reports a lawsuit filed by Coast Guard contractor fired over Charlie Kirk posts survived the Trump administration's motion to dismiss, allowing the First Amendment retaliation claim to proceed.
Former Coast Guard contract worker Peter Souders says he was fired "in retaliation for his private speech on a matter of significant national interest and attention," which he claims violated his First Amendment rights.
Souders sued the Department of Defense and Homeland Security, and officials in charge of those agencies, claiming he was fired for making comments on Facebook about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The 35-year-old engineer and project manager for government contractor Advanced Concepts Enterprises Inc. (ACES) had been working at the Coast Guard’s headquarters when members of the Charlie Kirk retribution campaign circulated his Facebook comments on X. One comment stated that Kirk opposed civil rights and abortion, and he called him a “noted Islamophobe,” a “Putin operative” and a “Nazi.” He also wrote: “You can’t be pro-punching Nazis and then pretend it’s a bad thing when someone actually does.”
The Kirk critic was terminated on in 2025, according to the lawsuit. He was allegedly told by the chief financial officer of ACES that they “received an email from the federal government directing that Mr. Souders’s work for the Coast Guard be terminated,” and that they would have to fire him completely because he was employed as a Coast Guard contractor.
Souders asserted that defendants retaliated against him for protected speech, among other relief, but the federal government moved to dismiss the complaint in its entirety arguing that the claim belongs in a different court because Souders is a contract employee.
But Judge Timothy Kelly, a Trump appointee, said he disagreed with defendants that Souders’s First Amendment claim so belongs in the Court of Federal Claims, rather than the US District Court for the District of Columbia where it was filed.
“The contract at issue is between the Coast Guard and Souders’s employer — ACES — not between the Coast Guard and Souders himself,” said Judge Kelly.
If Souders is victorious, he would not be the first individual nabbing a win over First Amendment protections concerning a Charlie Kirk diss.
This year, solid Republican Oglethorpe County, GA., agreed to settle with a school teacher who it removed after she accurately posted that assassinated MAGA influencer Charlie Kirk was a gun enthusiast. And plaintiffs in similar cases alleging First Amendment violations have struck back, receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars in settlement agreements.
The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports “a professor at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville was awarded $1.9 million; an employee at Indiana University will receive $225,000; and an Iowa teacher won more than $200,000.”
