A retired law enforcement officer from Tennessee spent more than a month in jail this fall after being arrested over a Facebook meme tied to the September assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.
Although prosecutors later dropped the lone criminal charge against Larry Bushart, his weeks-long incarceration became a flashpoint in the nation’s strained political and legal atmosphere following the killing, as conservatives pushed to limit what they viewed as offensive public commentary about the polarizing figure.
Bushart has now filed a lawsuit over what he says was an unlawful arrest and prosecution.
In a 30-page complaint filed in federal court in Tennessee, Bushart argues that authorities violated his constitutional rights by arresting him over the meme, claiming officials targeted him “simply for speaking his mind.”
“It is clearly established that the First Amendment prohibits government officials from arresting people for protected political speech,” his attorneys wrote in the filing. Bushart is represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.
The legal trouble began roughly 10 days after Kirk — a prominent supporter of President Donald Trump who worked to help secure his reelection last year — was shot and killed at an outdoor event at Utah Valley University on September 10. Bushart shared a meme on Facebook referencing a vigil planned in Tennessee for Kirk.
“This seems relevant today,” the meme read, alongside an image of Trump and a quote attributed to him from 2024, after a shooting at Perry High School in Des Moines, Iowa.
“We have to get over it,” Trump is quoted as saying in the post.
According to court records, four officers went to Bushart’s home the following day, arrested him and booked him into jail on a charge of “threatening mass violence at a school.” Authorities said the post was interpreted locally as a threat toward a nearby school with a similar name to the one involved in the 2024 shooting.
Bushart remained incarcerated for 37 days because he could not afford the $2 million bond set in his case. In late October, a Tennessee district attorney moved to dismiss the charge, and Bushart was released shortly afterward.
“When Mr. Bushart posted the meme, he had no inkling or reason to think that anyone would take it as a threat of violence. And unsurprisingly, defendants … have produced no evidence that any person interpreted the meme as a threat,” the lawsuit states. “In fact, the Perry County School District has no records at all concerning Mr. Bushart or the meme.”
The complaint names Perry County, Tennessee; county Sheriff Nick Weems; and Jason Morrow, a county investigator involved in the case, as defendants.
According to the lawsuit, Weems instructed officers to arrest Bushart, and both Weems and Morrow “understood” the meme “as political commentary on the debate about guns in America, but orchestrated his arrest anyway.”
CNN has contacted the county seeking comment. Weems and Morrow were not immediately available for response.
Bushart is requesting a jury trial and is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages for what he alleges were violations of his civil rights.
His attorneys said in court filings that Bushart, the primary income earner in his household, lost his post-retirement job as a result of the time he spent in jail and that the ordeal has chilled his “participation in online political conversation because he is afraid that something like his arrest and incarceration might happen to him again.”
“I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law,” Bushart said in a statement Wednesday. “But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”
