Westhampton Beach Teacher Says She Was Fired Over Charlie Kirk-Related TikTok

Laura Mara was a music teacher in the district when she posted a TikTok on Sept. 11, 2025 – just one day after the conversative pundit’s assassination – discussing the political divide about gun control that was renewed in the wake of Kirk’s murder.

“‘It sickens me that you’re celebrating his death, he was a father,’” Mara said in the TikTok video, paraphrasing Kirk’s supporters. “We’re not celebrating his death. 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.”

Kirk was the founder of Turning Point USA, a nonprofit organization aimed at conservative activism on high school and college campuses. Kirk was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025 during a talk he was giving at Utah Valley University. Following a brief manhunt, Tyler James Robinson was arrested and charged with Kirk’s murder. He has pleaded not guilty.

Several reports state that one day after posting her TikTok video, district administrators gave Mara a letter stating she was on administrative leave and barred from the high school’s campus. She was then officially let go in November. The lawsuit argues that her firing violated labor law and New York State human rights protections, as well as targeted Mara for her sexual orientation and for exercising her First Amendment rights off of school property.

Mara is being represented by Smithtown-based attorney Austin Smith.

“She posted a TikTok video after the Charlie Kirk assassination, and she was immediately, within 24 hours, suspended and told to stay off the property,” Smith said. “A couple of days later, at a Board of Education Meeting, a certain group of parents were furious about the TikTok video – and I should point out she had made her TikTok account inaccessible to anyone under 18, so this had nothing to do with kids seeing it – but the parents saw it.

“At that meeting, they began to make a lot of allegations that she was a feminist, that she was indoctrinating their kids, that she was treating boys differently,” Smith continued. “The Board of Education meeting was on September 15. They then began to conduct an investigation, and lo and behold, at the investigation, they came up with very vague, unsubstantiated, undated, unsourced allegations that she had been making sexual comments about her partner and, at one point, they said she made an inappropriate hand gesture that was sort of sexually charged. At no point did any of these complaints come out over the course of the year. They all came out sort of all of a sudden after the Charlie Kirk video, and she was recommended for termination.”

The Westhampton Beach UFSD did not return a request for comment.

“We’re seeking $5 million in damages,” Smith added. “This is all over the internet. She’s been applying for jobs and she’s been Scarlet Letter’d, and no one on Long Island will hire her because of this.”

Many political figures on both sides of the aisle strongly condemned Kirk’s killing, including President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and former Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton.

“He was loved and admired by ALL, especially me, and now, he is no longer with us. Melania and my Sympathies go out to his beautiful wife Erika and family. Charlie, we love you,” Trump posted on Truth Social. The President also ordered flags across the country to be lowered to half-staff.

Online, some critics of Kirk pointed out April 2023 remarks Kirk had made with regards to gun rights, saying, “I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God‑given rights,” which is what Mara appeared to reference in her TikTok video.

Such comments referencing the statement drew strong criticism from Kirk’s supporters.

“She was just repeating what Charlie Kirk had said about school shootings, that this is the price you pay for Second Amendment rights in the United States,” Austin Smith said. “I mean, compared to some people, she didn’t say she hated him, she didn’t say he was a bad person. She didn’t say he was vile. She just repeated that line.”

While Mara appears to be the first individual on Long Island to lose their job over a response to Kirk’s killing, as many as 600 people nationwide have been fired because of responses — mostly public sector employees, including teachers and law enforcement, but also media figures and more. Notably, Jimmy Kimmel, host of ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live!, was briefly suspended from the network after making fun of Trump’s response to the murder and claiming that the accused killer, Robinson, was a right-winger, though Kimmel had also called the murder “senseless.” Kimmel was eventually reinstated.