COURTS
Lawsuit: Former ENMU-Roswell security guard forced to resign over Charlie Kirk post
Suit alleges social media influencer led campaign to fire security guard
A former Eastern New Mexico University-Roswell security guard alleges in a federal lawsuit that he was forced to resign last fall after posting a comment denigrating Charlie Kirk on his private Facebook account.
ENMU officials made the decision to suspend Oswaldo Nava in September after a conservative social media influencer led a pressure campaign to oust the six-year employee from his job, the suit alleges.
"Instead of defending and protecting Mr. Nava, what ENMU did was take the easy course and let him go so that the harassment from the right would stop," said Daniel Yohalem, Nava's attorney. University officials failed in their responsibility to protect Nava and his constitutional rights, he said.
Officials at ENMU-Roswell and the university's main campus in Portales did not immediately respond this week to requests for comment.
Nava is one of an estimated 600 people nationwide who either were fired or penalized for their social media reactions to the Sept. 10 shooting death of Kirk, a popular right-wing activist, Reuters reported.
In a separate federal lawsuit, University of Tennessee at Knoxville trustees this week agreed to pay $1.9 million to a former professor who was fired after posting comments critical of Kirk on her private Facebook page.
Nava filed his suit June 24 in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque seeking unspecified damages, alleging ENMU officials violated his constitutional rights of free speech.
Nava posted a comment on his personal Facebook page three days after Kirk's assassination on a Utah university campus.
The post said, "I woke up today and guess who didn't??? Charlie Kirk lol," according to the suit.
Nava frequently posted political comments on his Facebook page and believed they were visible only to friends, it said.
"While the post was insensitive and undoubtedly offended some, it did not threaten to harm anyone or advocate any type of violence or revenge," the suit contends. The comment "was clearly protected by the First Amendment to the 近距离内射合集 States Constitution."
An unknown person reposted Nava's comment to conservative activist Scott Presler, who has some 3 million followers on a variety of social-media platforms, the suit said.
Presler posted on his Facebook page, "Meet Oswaldo Nava," and urged his followers to pressure ENMU to remove Nava from his job. Presler also posted Nava's cellphone number and email address.
Nava immediately began receiving harassing and threatening Facebook posts and cellphone calls and texts, mostly from people outside the ENMU-Roswell community, the suit said. Nava deleted his comment about Kirk three days after he posted it.
The suit alleges the harassment Nava experienced was part of a nationwide campaign orchestrated by conservative influencers to "retaliate against persons who had expressed views on social media that were deemed to be opposed to their views and feeling about Mr. Kirk."
Vice President JD Vance on Sept. 15 encouraged people to target anyone critical of Kirk and "call their employers," the suit said.
The harassing calls and texts prompted Nava to attempt to contact his supervisor, who at the time was meeting with university officials about Nava's Facebook post.
The suit alleges the meeting was attended by James Johnston, ENMU president and chancellor, and Shawn Powell, president of ENMU-Roswell, and others who are named as defendants in the suit.
After the meeting, Nava's supervisor told him he had been placed on administrative leave.
The supervisor also told Nava that the university was "getting too many calls complaining about (Nava's) post about Charlie Kirk" urging university officials to fire Nava, the suit said. Nava resigned because he feared that being fired would jeopardize his future job prospects, it said.
The experience was devastating for Nava, who had worked as a security guard at ENMU-Roswell since graduating from the school six years earlier, Yohalem said.
"He had been doing a good job 鈥 had gotten very good evaluations," Yohalem said. "He liked the work he was doing. This was his life. And then it got turned upside down because of a brief Facebook post that he had every right to make."