Charlie Kirk
AP Photo/ Alex Goodlet

A retired police officer was handcuffed in the dead of night, jailed for 37 days, and held on a £1.59 million ($2 million) bond, all for sharing a Facebook meme he did not even create. What might once have sounded like a cautionary tale about life in an authoritarian state instead unfolded in a small American county, and ended with a six-figure payout to the man at the centre of it all.

Larry Bushart, 61, of Lexington, Tennessee, has won a £663,000 ($835,000) settlement from Perry County after a federal civil rights lawsuit argued that his arrest following the September 2025 assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk was a brazen violation of his First and Fourth Amendment rights. The settlement, announced on 20 May 2026, closes a case that drew national attention, exposed deep fault lines over political speech in America's polarised climate, and implicated a county sheriff who, by his own admission, knew from the outset that the meme posed no credible threat.

A Meme, a Vigil, and an Arrest

The sequence of events began on 10 September 2025, when a gunman killed Kirk at a Utah university. In the days that followed, Bushart, a man with 34 years in law enforcement and 24 years in the National Guard, scrolled past a Facebook post promoting a candlelight vigil for Kirk in nearby Perry County, Tennessee. Underneath it, he posted several political memes expressing his views on the outpouring of grief. One of those memes, which Bushart did not create or alter, showed a photograph of President Donald Trump alongside the words 'We have to get over it', a quote Trump made in January 2024 following a school shooting at Perry High School in Perry, Iowa.

Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems decided the meme constituted a threat, not against the Iowa school Kirk's quote referenced, but against Perry County High School in Tennessee, which shared a similar name with a school 695 miles away in a different state. On the evening of 21 September 2025, local police first visited Bushart's home around 20:00 to inform him the sheriff's office had concerns. Bodycam footage of that visit, later released as part of the case record and published by FIRE, showed the attending officer openly confessing his own confusion: 'So I'm going to be completely honest with you, I have really no idea what they're talking about. He just called me and said there were some concerning posts that were made... I don't know, I just know they said something was insinuating violence.' Bushart told the officer he had threatened no one and refused to remove the post.

Hours later, after 23:00, Perry County issued an arrest warrant and police returned to take Bushart into custody on a charge of 'threatening mass violence at a school.' Bodycam footage of that second visit showed the arresting officer finishing Bushart's own sentence: when Bushart said 'I may have been an asshole, but...,' the officer replied, '...that's not illegal.'

What the Sheriff Knew — and Left Out

The most legally significant detail of the case was not disputed: Weems himself later admitted in a media interview that he and his deputies 'knew' at the time of the arrest that the meme referred to the Iowa shooting and not to any school in Tennessee. That admission, that the rationale for the warrant was constructed on a basis Weems privately understood to be false, formed the centrepiece of the federal lawsuit filed in December 2025 by Bushart, with representation from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and Phillips & Phillips, PLLC, in Lexington.

The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Tennessee, named Weems personally, Investigator Jason Morrow, who helped obtain the warrant, and Perry County itself. It alleged violations of Bushart's First Amendment right to free speech and his Fourth Amendment right against unlawful seizure. Because FIRE argued Weems and Morrow acted with full knowledge that their conduct was unconstitutional, both were sued in their personal capacities. The redacted warrant application, made available through FIRE's case documentation, showed that the critical context, that the meme's reference point was an Iowa school, not a Tennessee one, had been omitted entirely.

Perry County schools, for their part, had no records of any complaints about Bushart's post. Perry County and Weems also failed to respond to multiple public records requests seeking evidence of the 'mass hysteria' Weems cited to justify the arrest, according to FIRE's filings.

A Warning to Law Enforcement Nationwide

Bushart's case was not an isolated incident. According to a Reuters investigation published in November 2025, more than 600 Americans faced some form of punishment for online speech in the aftermath of Kirk's assassination. In Tennessee alone, FIRE is separately representing Monica Meeks, a state employee fired solely for a Facebook post critical of Kirk. Earlier in 2026, Austin Peay State University settled a lawsuit brought by a professor dismissed for quoting Kirk's own words on gun violence.

In his settlement statement, Bushart struck a measured tone: 'I am pleased my First Amendment rights have been vindicated. The people's freedom to participate in civil discourse is crucial to a healthy democracy. I am looking forward to moving on and spending time with my family.'

FIRE senior attorney Adam Steinbaugh was more direct: 'No one should be hauled off to jail in the dark of night over a harmless meme just because the authorities disagree with its message. We're pleased that Larry has been compensated for this injustice, but local law enforcement never should have forced him to endure this ordeal in the first place.'

FIRE staff attorney Cary Davis framed the settlement in broader constitutional terms: 'It's in times of turmoil and heightened tensions that our national commitment to free speech is tested the most. When government officials fail that test, the Constitution exists to hold them accountable. Our hope is that Larry's settlement sends a message to law enforcement across the country: Respect the First Amendment today, or be prepared to pay the price tomorrow.'

The Supreme Court has long held, including in Watts v. United States, that heated political rhetoric is protected speech under the First Amendment, a precedent FIRE cited directly in its filings.

Bushart is now free, and Perry County is £663,000 ($835,000) poorer for having forgotten it.

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