Iowa licensing board solicited complaints against teachers over their Charlie Kirk social-media posts

Michael Cavin, executive director of the Iowa Board of Educational Examiners, sent a letter on board letterhead to superintendents across Iowa on September 19, 2025 — three days after West Delaware Community School District Superintendent Jen Vance had already resolved a complaint against counselor Katherine Mejia with a written reprimand. Cavin's letter referenced educators' "comments regarding the assassination of Charlie Kirk" and stated that "administrators are encouraged to file a complaint with the board," going on to specify the precise licensing regulations such a complaint should cite. Because of the letter, Vance submitted a formal complaint to the board concerning Mejia's Facebook posts, which had called Kirk "neither a martyr nor a hero" and referenced an unrelated Epstein-Trump post. Separately, after Johnston Community School District Superintendent Nikki Roorda learned of Cavin's letter, she filed a board complaint over a Facebook post by teacher Jennifer Smith that had called Kirk a "monster" and criticized his record on gun violence and remarks about Martin Luther King Jr. — a post Smith had already deleted at her district's request before Cavin's letter went out.

Mejia and Smith sued the board and Cavin in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa, alleging the solicitation of complaints constituted viewpoint discrimination and violated their First Amendment right to comment on a matter of public concern, and sought a temporary restraining order and injunction blocking further board action against them. The lawsuit noted that board members are appointees of Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, whose director of education, McKenzie Snow — a former Trump administration official — in turn appointed Cavin. Reynolds had publicly said educators who "celebrate[d] the execution of a human being" should be fired, and Republican legislators had separately demanded terminations over Kirk-related commentary.

Updates

2026-02-25 — Judge declined to block the board's investigation, called the state's actions "deeply troubling" [3]

Chief Judge Stephanie Rose of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa denied Mejia and Smith's request for an injunction, holding that federal courts generally defer to ongoing state licensing-board proceedings, which the teachers could challenge through the board's own process and Iowa's state courts. Rose nonetheless wrote that "Cavin's Sept. 19 letter was not a routine communication," noting it was sent to nearly all Iowa superintendents specifically in response to Kirk-related social media posts and named the ethical rule complaints should cite. Citing Reynolds's and legislators' public demands for educators' termination, Rose wrote that "the timing, the statewide reach, and the viewpoint-specific framing of the letter present a picture that is, at minimum, deeply troubling," and that "a licensing authority's enforcement apparatus should not be mobilized in response to political pressure to suppress disfavored commentary on a public figure's death." She said her ruling did not decide whether the board's investigation violates the First Amendment, only that the question must first be raised in board and state-court proceedings.