A Georgia English teacher who said she was forced out of her job over a social media post about the late conservative activist Charlie Kirk has reached a settlement with her school district, ending a federal free-speech lawsuit.
Michelle Mickens sued the Oglethorpe County School District in 2025, claiming she was placed on leave and told to either resign or be terminated after she posted about Kirk's political positions on her private Facebook page. On Friday, the Southern Poverty Law Center, which represented her along with co-counsel, announced that Mickens and the district had settled.
Mickens had taught in Georgia high schools for 24 years and was a finalist for the 2022 Georgia Teacher of the Year. According to her complaint, she had never received a formal complaint about her professional conduct before this incident.
The Post at the Center of the Case
According to the complaint, Mickens posted a direct quote from Kirk on her private account, which she said was visible only to close friends, hours after his assassination. The quote was one in which Kirk defended gun rights: "I think it's worth it. I think it's worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."
The next day, Mickens said, she was called to the office and told the school had received a complaint about the post. She later learned that a former classmate had taken a screenshot of it and shared it publicly on X, urging readers to contact the principal at her school.
When she spoke with the principal and the superintendent, Mickens said, they suggested she delete the post and issue an apology. She told them she wanted to consult her attorney first. The following week, according to the complaint, she was asked to remain home and found that her access to school email had been removed.
The District's Response
When the lawsuit was filed, a spokesperson for the district said some of the facts in the case were "inaccurate or incomplete," but declined to give specifics, citing the pending litigation.
Oglethorpe County is a small, rural district northeast of Athens, with about 2,300 students across four schools. The case drew attention well beyond it because of the subject matter and because it landed amid a broader national wave of disputes over educators disciplined for comments about Kirk after his death.
A Confidential Settlement
The terms of the settlement are confidential. In her lawsuit, Mickens had asked the court to restore her job and remove any reference to policy violations from her record. It is not clear whether she will return to work at her former school. A motion to dismiss the case was filed on Wednesday.
"We are pleased to reach a mutually amicable settlement of this matter," said Sam Boyd, a senior supervising attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center. He said courts across the country had recognized in other cases involving comments about Kirk that "public school employees, including teachers, have a constitutionally protected right to free speech."
The case is one of several nationally testing where a public school district's authority over its employees ends and a teacher's off-duty speech rights begin, a line courts have long wrestled with and that a run of recent, politically charged incidents has pushed back into the spotlight.
