Utah
Utah professor explains legality of settlement granted to Tennessee man jailed for controversial meme
SALT LAKE CITY (ABC4) — A Tennessee man is about to be $835,000 richer, thanks to a lawsuit settlement from the state that ruled he is not at fault for a meme he posted about Charlie Kirk’s killing. A University of Utah law professor is weighing in on the legal precedent.
61-year-old retired police officer Larry Bushart of Tennessee was jailed for 37 days following a meme he posted about the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. After his lawsuit against the state was settled on Tuesday, he will be $835,000 richer.
Bushart’s post to Facebook read: “This seems relevant today…” Attached was a photo of President Trump with the words, “We have to get over it,” which he is quoted as saying in 2024 after a school shooting at Iowa’s Perry High School. Bushart reportedly refused to take down the post and was arrested later in September.
Critically, Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems said that most of Bushart’s memes were lawful free speech, but he had sent an officer to arrest the poster because residents reportedly felt alarmed that a local school was being threatened.
To better understand the precedent behind Bushart’s case, which has drawn national attention, ABC4.com spoke with Clifford Rosky, a law professor at the University of Utah. According to him, this area of First Amendment law is simple and well-known.
“The government can’t throw someone in jail, for example, because they don’t like the opinion that they expressed. They don’t like what they said. This case does appear to be that kind of case,” Rosky said.
He continued, “The settlement suggests that that’s how both parties ultimately saw it, that this man said things that were clearly offensive and maybe probably designed to offend, but that’s not a crime. And the Supreme Court has said many times that the free speech clause protects the speech that we hate as well as the speech that we love.”
Bushart’s acquittal means that a judge found that his post hadn’t crossed the threshold of what’s known as a true threat or criminal incitement, according to Rosky. He added that those exceptions to First Amendment protections are defined in the Constitution in a very narrow way.
“That’s the key, is intentionally causing fear. So obviously, there was some question about whether this man in Tennessee said anything that fell into one of those categories. And apparently, it looks like the answer was no,” Rosky said.
While rulings like this are common, Rosky said that it’s not normal for a government official to see speech they personally don’t like and attempt to censor it. What’s more, is that attempting to censor the speech by throwing someone in jail is extreme— but not unheard of.
Rosky acknowledged that tensions are high in the country for school shootings, and an assassination of a public figure to boot certainly didn’t help on September 10. Still, he said, there’s a big distinction between saying something the government doesn’t like and saying something that indicates danger to others.
“It’s not like it’s never happened before in our country, because when someone has power, it’s tempting to say, ‘Well, I think what you did is terrible, and so there must be some law that you broke,’” Rosky explained. “It sounds like there may have been, at some point, some argument made on behalf of the police department that one of his posts was like an implicit threat. It sounds like the police department ultimately abandoned that argument when they issued, you know, an $800,000 check.”
There is still reason to be optimistic, however. According to Rosky, challenges to free speech have occurred since the country’s founding, and the government has sought to interfere with citizens’ expression of ideas it disagrees with.
He explained, “We’ve been throwing people in jail and fining them and firing them from their jobs and all kinds of other things to try to control what they say, but the nice thing is that as long as it has been happening, our courts have protected our freedom of speech and reminded the government of its responsibilities under the Constitution.”
AMERICAN FORK, Utah (KUTV) — With students returning to classrooms next month, school districts across Utah are still working to fill hundreds of teaching positions, particularly in elementary and special education.
While Utah has one of the nation’s strongest teacher retention rates, staffing shortages remain a challenge as districts prepare for the start of the school year.
Parent Brenda Petroff said she believes low teacher pay continues to be one of the biggest factors contributing to the shortage.
MORE | Education
“Utah in general has a teacher shortage,” Petroff said. “They can get paid a lot more in other states.”
She said increasing teacher salaries could help attract and keep more educators in Utah classrooms.
“I just feel like they need to be paid more,” Petroff said. “I feel like they need to teach them things that they’re going to use in life.”
According to state data, hundreds of teaching positions remain open statewide, with elementary education among the areas experiencing the greatest need. State data also reports that about 11% of Utah teachers are considered underqualified or not fully qualified for the positions they currently hold.
Cami Harper, a former teacher turned executive director of human resources for the Alpine School District, said an underqualified teacher is someone who has not yet earned the appropriate license for the subject or grade level they are teaching.
“Luckily, the state has made it very easy and is willing to work with teachers to get a license to allow them to be qualified,” Harper said.
The Alpine School District is looking to hire about 22 teachers before the school year begins.
Harper said the district’s greatest staffing needs are in special education and certain specialized secondary subjects, where applicant pools tend to be smaller.
“For us and the state, special education is a very high-need area,” Harper said. “We’ve been blessed to have great candidates apply, but we don’t have as many applicants applying for those positions.”
Harper said Alpine has fewer vacancies than in previous years, in part because of declining enrollment — a trend affecting several districts across the state.
KUTV contacted nearly a dozen Utah school districts for updated vacancy numbers and information about their hiring efforts. Many district officials were unavailable because of the holiday week. This story will be updated as additional information becomes available.
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The move gives the Aggies “instant credibility” on the recruiting trail, Bronco Mendenhall says.
(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) The Old Main building at Utah State University in Logan on Monday, Nov. 17, 2025.
SALT LAKE CITY (KUTV) — In the middle of Utah’s drought, an environmental group is calling out what it labeled “hysteria” over water supplies for Wasatch Front cities.
“We’ve heard for 50 years that Utah is about to run out of water for its cities,” said Zach Frankel, director of the Utah Rivers Council. “And it’s a myth.”
Frankel, a frequent presence on Utah’s Capitol Hill, said cities — including the people who live in them — account for only a sliver of Utah’s total water use.
MORE | Utah Drought
He said that water rates are so low we have “the most wasteful water users in the country” and that outdoor watering could be dramatically curtailed with little to no impact.
Claims of running out of water, Frankel said, are aimed at pushing pricey, publicly funded water construction projects.
Ogden is embarking on a $100 million replacement of a 100-year-old pipeline through Ogden Canyon aimed at “improving reliability, reducing water loss, and supporting long-term water security.”
The Weber Basin Waster Conservancy District is not driving or financing the construction, but is involved with it, and the general manager called the Utah Rivers Council position “hogwash.”
“We’re not doing projects … just to spend hundreds of millions of dollars,” said GM Scott Paxman. “We are running out of water.”
Paxman said 20,000 more homes are already approved and/or permitted within the district boundaries, and even more permits are likely in Ogden Valley, Summit and Morgan Counties.
Laura Briefer, director of the Salt Lake City Department of Public Utilities, said the city rates have gone up, and are “encouraging conservation.”
Frankel said conservation efforts can go further, even as more and more water is diverted in northern Utah from agriculture to growing communities — water that will not end up in a near-record-low Great Salt Lake.
“If you went to the gas station and saw someone pouring gasoline on the sidewalk while simultaneously simply telling us, ‘We’re running out of gas,’ it would be, ‘What are you talking about?’” Frankel said. “Put the nozzle back.”
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