OPINION | This article contains commentary that reflects the author's opinion.
Former Illinois State University (ISU) football coach has filed a lawsuit over his First Amendment rights.
Kurt Beathard, who was the college’s offensive coordinator on the football team, says he was fired because he removed a “Black Lives Matter” poster from his office door.
He replaced it with a handwritten poster that read, “All Lives Matter to our Lord & Savior Jesus Christ.”
In response, the college kids boycotted practice.
The next day head football coach Brock Spack told Beathard he did not “like the direction of the offense” so he was reassigned to a “completely bogus and made-up position” that forced him to work from home.
At the end of his 2020 contract, he job was not renewed according to the lawsuit.
The suits names Director of Athletics Larry Lyons who “authorized and supported” the action. It appears that ISU itself is not a defendant in the suit.
Beathard’s lawyer Doug Churdar explained, “If you put the government’s message on your door, you keep your job.”
“If you replace it with your own message, you’re fired,” he added.
ISU’s problem is that it made the BLM sign and was “clearly not happy with the posting of an alternative message,” Turley said. The university’s defense may lean on the athletes’ boycott, arguing “the conflict between Beathard and his players” justified termination.
‘My wife’s life mattered’
Beathard is the son of Hall of Famer Bobby Beathard, the longtime general manager of the team then known as the Washington Redskins.
The younger Beathard was a veteran coach of teams across the South and Midwest when he joined the ISU Redbirds, where his offense “set records” in 2014 and 2015, according to the suit.
He stepped down in 2016 to deal with family issues, came back in 2018 to lead two more seasons of “successful” offense, and took another break until his wife died of cancer in June 2020.
George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis meant ISU was “dealing with tension” when Beathard came back in late summer 2020. Spack, the head coach, allegedly told him BLM was “freaking nuts” on campus.
The lawsuit suggests Beathard was the fall guy for Lyons, the athletics director, who had upset players by using the phrase “All Redbird Lives Matter” in a Zoom meeting Aug. 27.
