Montclair State University: Adjunct Hiring Reversed After Trump Assassination Tweets
Cases
Montclair State University
Case Overview
closed
In July 2017, Kevin Allred used his personal Twitter account to tweet criticism of President Donald Trump, then tweeted his hope that someone might assassinate him. After the tweets were criticized, Montclair State University—where Allred was set to begin as an adjunct in the fall semester—deleted Allred’s biography from its website and claimed that it had never employed him. FIREwrote to Montclair laying out the evidence that it had hired Allred and explaining that his expressed hope of violence was not a “true threat,” and was protected by the First Amendment.