A Westhampton Beach music teacher says she lost her job because of a TikTok video she posted responding to the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Now she’s suing the district.
Laura Mara filed a lawsuit against the Westhampton Beach Union-Free School District, claiming administrators fired her for exercising her First Amendment rights off school property. The suit also alleges the district targeted her based on her sexual orientation, arguing both claims violate labor law and New York State human rights protections.
Mara posted the TikTok on September 11, 2025, one day after Kirk was fatally shot during a speaking engagement at Utah Valley University. In the video, she addressed the tension between Kirk’s supporters and his critics in the aftermath of his death, specifically referencing comments Kirk had made in April 2023 about gun rights.
“We’re not celebrating his death,” Mara said in the video, pushing back against what she characterized as criticism from Kirk’s supporters. “We are responding to his death the way he responded to children getting pew-pewed in schools. And that response is thoughts and prayers. I guess that’s the price you pay to freely bear arms in the United States of America.”
The remarks appeared to reference Kirk’s 2023 statement that some gun deaths annually were an acceptable cost to preserve Second Amendment rights. That statement drew sharp criticism from gun control advocates when Kirk made it, and resurfaced widely in online discussions following his death.
According to the lawsuit, Mara received a letter from district administrators the very next day placing her on administrative leave and barring her from the high school campus. The district officially terminated her employment in November 2025. Mara is represented by Smithtown-based attorney Austin Smith.
The Westhampton Beach UFSD did not respond to a request for comment from Long Island Forum. The district previously told Newsday it does not comment on pending litigation.
Kirk’s assassination last September sent shockwaves through American political life. The founder of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit focused on conservative activism among high school and college students, Kirk was a prominent and polarizing figure in conservative media for over a decade. Tyler James Robinson was arrested shortly after the shooting and charged with murder. He has pleaded not guilty.
Political leaders across the spectrum condemned the killing. Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and former presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton all issued statements denouncing the violence.
The online response was far more fractured. Some critics of Kirk circulated his past gun rights comments almost immediately, arguing his death illustrated the real-world consequences of policies he had championed. Supporters condemned those reactions as callous and politically motivated.
Mara’s case sits at the center of that divide, and it raises a question Long Island parents and educators have been asking since September: where does a teacher’s off-duty speech end and a district’s authority begin?
New York State law generally protects employees from retaliation based on lawful off-duty conduct. Public employees also retain First Amendment protections for speech made as private citizens on matters of public concern, though courts weigh those protections carefully when the speech touches on issues that could disrupt the workplace. Whether Mara’s TikTok crosses that line will be for the courts to decide.
What is already clear is that a teacher with presumably clean standing in September no longer had a job by November. Parents in the district deserve a fuller accounting of how that decision was made, who made it, and whether it followed proper procedure. Administrative leave letters issued within 24 hours of a social media post raise real questions about due process, regardless of where anyone stands on gun policy.
The district’s silence may be legally prudent. But silence is not accountability, and it does nothing to reassure teachers that their off-duty lives are their own.