Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission fired three employees over Charlie Kirk-related social media posts

On September 15, 2025, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) announced on its official @MyFWC social media account that it had fired an employee over a social media post about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, who was shot and killed five days earlier at Utah Valley University. The employee, wildlife biologist Britney Brown, had reposted a satirical message from a parody account to her private Instagram story while on vacation; the post did not name FWC or relate to her job duties. After the account Libs of TikTok circulated a screenshot of Brown's post alongside her LinkedIn profile and called for her firing, FWC said in its tweet that "the comments and actions of this individual are not in line with the FWC, our values, or our mission" and terminated her.

FWC separately fired at least two other employees that same week over their own social media comments about Kirk's death. Dispatcher Haley Massung was terminated after commenting "rest in p—" on a Facebook post announcing Kirk's killing. Biologist Taylor Ozimek was fired over a comment referencing a past Kirk remark that some gun deaths were an acceptable cost of Second Amendment rights, writing "worth it"; her termination letter, like Brown's public firing, is dated September 15, 2025. Neither Massung's nor Ozimek's posts identified them as FWC employees or referenced their work. FWC Executive Director Roger Young was later named as a defendant when all three women sued the agency over their firings, each alleging the terminations violated their First Amendment right to engage in protected political speech as private citizens.

The firings came amid a broader wave of workplace retaliation against people who criticized Kirk in the days after his assassination, as activists organized to identify and report critical comments to employers; then-Vice President JD Vance urged listeners of Kirk's own show to do the same.

Updates

2026-05 — Federal court sanctioned FWC official and its outside law firm for false claims in Brown's case [6, 7]

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida sanctioned an FWC official for falsely claiming Brown's post had caused significant operational disruption and generated hundreds of complaints, and separately sanctioned the state's outside law firm, Lawson Huck Gonzalez, for what the court called vexatious litigation. Discovery had shown the disruption claims underlying Brown's termination were false and that FWC knew it.

2026-09-10 — Florida's total payout across the three firings reached roughly $615,000 [3, 8]

Brown settled her lawsuit for $485,000 (including $210,000 in the state's own legal fees) and Massung settled for $65,000. Ozimek, whose case had been reported as still pending as recently as this reporting, also settled for $65,000, bringing the state's combined payout across the three firings to about $615,000.