Tennessee pays $835,000 after man jailed over Facebook post about Kirk</final

Tennessee officials agreed to pay $835,000 to settle a lawsuit brought by Larry Bushart, a 61-year-old retired police officer who spent 37 days in jail after posting a Facebook meme about Charlie Kirk’s killing.

Bushart was arrested in September 2025 after refusing to take down a meme that quoted President Donald Trump’s “We have to get over it” remark, which Trump had made in response to the January 2024 school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa. Bushart posted the image under a Facebook thread about a vigil for Kirk in Perry County, Tennessee, with the caption, “This seems relevant today...”

Authorities held Bushart on a $2 million bond before dropping the felony charge against him in October 2025. Perry County officials said some residents mistook the post for a threat against Perry County High School in Linden, Tennessee, but Sheriff Nick Weems later said he knew the meme referred to the Iowa shooting and that the local school-threat concern rested on a misleading interpretation.

The federal civil-rights lawsuit, filed in December 2025 in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, named Perry County, Weems and investigator Jason Morrow. It alleged violations of Bushart’s First Amendment free-speech rights and Fourth Amendment protections against unlawful seizure. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression backed the case and said no one should be jailed over a harmless meme.

Bushart’s case drew attention because it was a rare instance in which online speech led to criminal prosecution, not just job loss or other private consequences. Bushart said he lost his postretirement job while jailed and missed his wedding anniversary and the birth of his granddaughter.

The settlement ends a costly episode for Perry County taxpayers and closes a case that became a test of how far police can go when offensive online speech collides with public fear. District Attorney General Hans Schwendimann declined to prosecute the case and dropped the charges, but not before Bushart had already spent more than a month behind bars.