Teacher Fired for TikTok Posts Pre-Hire Loses Free Speech Appeal

A Massachusetts school district defeated a First Amendment appeal by a high school teacher it fired over TikTok posts on gender identity, critical race theory, and illegal immigration that were deemed to violate the district’s “core values.”

The “six allegedly controversial memes” the teacher posted to her personal TikTok account weren’t discovered until after she was hired, but the usual test for determining when a public worker’s speech is shielded by the US Constitution still applied, the US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said. It rejected the teacher’s argument that the First Amendment test “for claims by private ...