NASHVILLE, TN – A lawsuit filed in the wake of a Tennessee man being jailed in excess of a month for a poorly timed meme shared online in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s murder in September of 2025, a joint settlement was reached in favor of the man with the respective county and law enforcement officials who played a roll in his arrest last year.
In the realm of backlash stemming from unpopular social media posts regarding contentious issues, many ramifications can surface ranging from job loss to social ostracization. But when retired law enforcement officer Larry Bushart posted a meme downplaying Kirk’s murder last September, he found himself placed in handcuffs and hauled off to jail for 37 days before being released.
On September 22nd, 2025, 61-year-old Bushart was arrested on charges of threatening mass violence on school property, which the evidence presented to support the arrest was a meme shared in a Facebook post promoting a vigil for Kirk. The offending meme in question depicted a quote from President Trump which read, “We have to get over it,” in reference to a mass shooting at Perry High School that occurred in January of 2024, with Bushart captioning the comment with, “This seems relevant today.”
Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems justified the arrest of Bushart last September, saying at the time, “investigators believe Bushart was fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community.”
However, Bushart and those who came to his defense highlighted that no reasonable threat against a school could be extrapolated by a meme quoting President Trump’s thoughts on a school shooting that occurred in a different state and nearly two years earlier.
Bushart was eventually released from custody on October 29th, 2025, after prosecutors dropped the charge against him without offering an explanation, but during his incarceration he reportedly lost his job and missed both his anniversary and the birth of his grandchild. The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) took up Bushart’s case when he opted to sue Perry County, Sheriff Weems, and an investigator linked to the case that resulted in his arrest this past December, where Bushart claimed his First Amendment rights were violated.
Bushart said of the lawsuit at the time of filing, “I spent over three decades in law enforcement, and have the utmost respect for the law. But I also know my rights, and I was arrested for nothing more than refusing to be bullied into censorship.”
After months of litigation, the parties named in the suit reportedly agreed to a joint settlement earlier in May where Bushart will be awarded $835,000 in exchange for dropping the lawsuit.
Following the favorable settlement, Bushart said in a released statement, “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.”
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