A University of South Dakota professor who raged against murdered right-wing youth activist Charlie Kirk on Facebook cannot be fired from his post, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.
Phillip Michael Hook, a tenured professor of art at USD, was placed on administrative leave and notified of the intent to remove him from his position by the South Dakota Board of Regents following a Facebook post in which he criticized the Turning Point USA founder, after a gunman shot him during a political student event at Utah Valley University in Orem earlier this month.
"Okay. I don’t give a flying f--- about this Kirk person," wrote Hook in the post. "Apparently, he was a hate-spreading Nazi. I wasn’t paying close enough attention to the idiotic right fringe to even know who he was. I’m sorry for his family that he was a hate-spreading Nazi and got killed. I’m sure they deserved better. Maybe good people could now enter their lives. But geez, where was all this concern when the politicians in Minnesota were shot? And the school shootings? And Capitol Police? I have no thoughts or prayers for this hate-spreading Nazi. A shrug, maybe."
Hook subsequently followed up with a post apologizing for going too far — but he was shortly hit with disciplinary action, and filed a lawsuit in federal court alleging this amounted to retaliation against his First Amendment rights.
U.S. Senior Judge Karen E. Schreier of the District Court of South Dakota agreed, issuing a temporary restraining order.
"At this stage, due to the short proximity in time between Hook’s post and the September 12, 2025, letter, the singular reference to Hook’s social media post in the intent to terminate letter, and the communications from South Dakota politicians to the SDBOR calling for Hook’s removal, the court concludes that Hook has demonstrated a fair chance of prevailing on the issue of whether his first Facebook post was the 'substantial or motivating factor' in defendants’ decision to place Hook on administrative leave and notify him of their intention to fire him," wrote Schreier.
