Man jailed for 37 days over a Facebook meme is starting a lawsuit, and the sheriff isn’t making it any better

A former law enforcement officer in Tennessee is taking legal action against his county and sheriff after he was jailed for 37 days simply for posting a controversial meme on Facebook related to the assassination of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Larry Bushart, who is 61, filed a new 30-page lawsuit this week against Perry County, Sheriff Nick Weems, and investigator Jason Morrow. Bushart was taken into custody and charged with “threatening mass violence at a school” after sharing the post just 10 days after Kirk’s Sept. 10 assassination. If you ask me, being arrested over a meme is already wild, but the situation got much worse when Bushart was unable to pay the astronomical $2 million bond, leaving him locked up for more than a month, according to The Guardian.

The post itself was shared in the comments section of a Facebook post discussing a vigil for Kirk. It showed a photo of President Trump alongside a remark the president had made following the 2024 shooting at Perry High School in Iowa: “We have to get over it.” Bushart captioned the image, “This seems relevant today.” Police came to Bushart’s home the very next day and arrested him.

You can’t arrest someone because they made you rage

The core conflict here revolves around whether the post was a threat to the local community. Perry County Sheriff Nick Weems claimed at the time that some residents might have interpreted the meme as a threat to the local Perry County High School. This is a tough spot because the meme was clearly referencing the school shooting that happened in Iowa in 2024, not the local Tennessee school.

In an interview at the time, Sheriff Weems said that the post caused “multiple people” to become “scared to send their kids to school.” Weems also admitted that his office knew the meme referred to a past shooting at a different high school in another state, but he claimed that “the public did not know.” Furthermore, Weems told the media that investigators believed Bushart was “fully aware of the fear his post would cause and intentionally sought to create hysteria within the community.”

Bushart and his lawyers strongly dispute that characterization in the lawsuit. They write that he “had no inkling or reason to think that anyone would take it as a threat of violence.” They also allege that the sheriff and county have produced no evidence that anyone actually interpreted the meme as a threat. In fact, the lawsuit points out that the Perry County school district has no records at all concerning Bushart or the meme.

The criminal charge was eventually dropped in late October, finally leading to Bushart’s release. Bushart filed the lawsuit with the help of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a non-profit organization dedicated to protecting free speech. The lawsuit alleges that the defendants violated Bushart’s First and Fourth Amendment rights.

For Bushart, the consequences of this ordeal were immediate and severe. He lost his post-retirement job in medical transportation because his incarceration “made it impossible for him to perform his duties.” That’s a truly awful outcome for sharing a political commentary meme. Bushart is now seeking a jury trial, along with compensatory and punitive damages.

Bushart, who spent decades in law enforcement himself, released a powerful statement through the non-profit organization helping his case. He said, “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.”

Adam Steinbaugh, a senior attorney for the organization, added a chilling thought for anyone concerned about free speech. He stated that “if police can come to your door in the middle of the night and put you behind bars based on nothing more than an entirely false and contrived interpretation of a Facebook post, no one’s first amendment rights are safe.”