State Worker Fired for Kirk Posts Can’t Revive Job During Trial

An Arkansas state health worker fired for posting on Facebook after Charlie Kirk’s assassination can’t be rehired while her trial moves forward, a federal judge said.

Joy Gray requested that the court order the Arkansas Department of Health to rehire her, order the health department to continue paying her, or mandate the agency provide her with a “name clearing hearing” to offer her an opportunity to explain her side and avoid reputational damage. But Gray failed to show that she’s likely to experience “irreparable harm” without a preliminary injunction, said Judge Lee P. Rudofsky of the US District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, rejecting her motion.

The ruling comes in the wake of similar cases involving reactions to the conservative activist’s assassination from other state workers, professors, and former federal contractors. Multiple people have faced negative job repercussions after conservatives criticized their comments about Kirk’s death, including the temporary suspension of late-night television host Jimmy Kimmel, with several lawsuits filed in response.

The failure of a “movant to show irreparable harm is an ‘independently sufficient basis upon which to deny a preliminary injunction,’” the judge said, quoting a 2024 Eighth Circuit ruling in Hotchkiss v Cedar Rapids Community School District.

Gray, who claims her firing constitutes unconstitutional retaliation for protected speech, has shown harm, but not irreparable harm, Rudofsky said, noting she failed to offer unique circumstances that created “atypical irreparable harm” related to her job loss. “The loss of a job—yes, even a government job—does not typically constitute irreparable harm in and of itself. That much has been made crystal clear by the Supreme Court,” he said, but Gray doesn’t assert she’ll “be made whole by money damages at the end of her case.”

Gray’s motion for injunction relief also fails because she doesn’t challenge a law or regulation “that is actively chilling (or imminently will begin chilling) her speech,” the judge said. Instead, she challenges a state agency’s decision to fire her, which “is a single, discrete act that took place entirely in the past. The Department is not currently chilling her speech.”

Gray also hasn’t shown a likelihood of success on the merits of her name-clearing-hearing claim. In fact, her chance of succeeding with that claim “close to zero,” Rudofsky said. This is in part because while Gray’s complaint, affidavit, and preliminary injunction motion imply that the department’s response to her grievance was stigmatizing, “the Court finds nothing in the Department’s response stigmatizing at all.”

Rudofsky emphasized that his ruling shouldn’t be misunderstood as a comment on who might prevail on Gray’s protected speech claim. Given the early state of the litigation and the prospect of additional evidence, it “may end up presenting an exceedingly difficult and close merits question,” he said.

The court opinion listed several of Gray’s social media posts, including a comment on a Facebook post concerning Kirk, in which she said, “‘Oh no, what if he’s ok?’”

Sutter & Gillham PLLC represents Gray. Arkansas Attorney General’s office represents Secretary of the Arkansas Department of Health Renee Mallory and four other individual state defendants.

The case is Gray v. Mallory, 2025 BL 419589, E.D. Ark., No. 4:25-cv-01057, order 11/21/25.