Texas Tribune, Texas Tech Discipline Against Law Student Over Alleged Charlie Kirk Comments Stands After Court Ruling:
A federal judge refused to order Texas Tech University to retract a report it made to the state bar about a law student accused of celebrating conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s killing [Fisher v. Campbell (N.D. Tex. May 12, 2026].
Tuesday’s ruling is a procedural setback in an ongoing free speech lawsuit Ellen “Ellie” Fisher filed last month to stop Texas Tech from putting the reprimand in her law school record and alerting the Texas Board of Law Examiners, saying the discipline could hurt her ability to become a lawyer.
However, before U.S. District Judge Brantley Starr ruled on her emergency request, Texas Tech did both, and also recommended against her admission to the State Bar of Texas.
Starr noted in his ruling that he could not make Texas Tech take it back. He wrote that sovereign immunity, which can shield states and their officials from certain federal court orders, barred him from doing so. …
Fisher, a third-year law student, Texas Tech undergraduate alum and founder of the campus’ NAACP chapter, says news of Kirk’s death broke at the end of a Race and Racism class on Sept. 10 and discussions among students and faculty continued throughout the day in faculty offices and legal clinics, where law students meet clients and work on real cases. Even so, the lawsuit argued, Fisher was the only student investigated and punished. …
Michael Thad Allen, Fisher’s attorney, said the case raises a basic question about legal education. “What kind of lawyers are they going to produce at the Texas Tech School of Law?” he said. “They can’t be made to feel uncomfortable? That is infantilizing.”
Brian Leiter (Chicago), The American Bar Association Needs to Investigate Texas Tech Law School for Violating the First Amendment Rights of a Student:
The First Amendment clearly protects otherwise lawful speech (regardless of its content) about the assassination of a political figure like Charlie Kirk. Since Texas Tech has clearly violated the First Amendment rights of its student, the ABA should yank its accreditation consistent with Standard 208.
Eugene Volokh (UCLA), Law School Recommended Against Student’s Bar Admission, Partly for Alleged “Celebration” of Charlie Kirk Assassination in Law School Clinic:
I am quite troubled by the law school’s actions here. Even if you do agree that the student did engage in “disrupti[ve]” and “unprofessional” speech, consider just how broad law schools’ authority would be on that standard. Nothing in the standard would be limited to celebrating assassinations, or praising violence more broadly: A wide range of speech on contested matters—race, sex, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, abortion, affirmative action, and more—may be seen by some as disruptive and unprofessional. It’s easy to imagine some students, faculty members, and deans so labeling, for instance, celebration of a court decision or election result that they see as racist or anti-trans or Islamophobic or what have you. That’s not a standard, I think, that’s compatible with the First Amendment rights of students in public universities.
FIRE, Letter to Jack Wade Nowlin (Dean, Texas Tech University School of Law)
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