Student Whose Racy Social Media Posts Riled a College Gets $250,000 Settlement

The University of Tennessee threatened to expel Kimberly Diei over posts the school said were inappropriate. She sued on First Amendment grounds.

A month after Kimberly Diei enrolled as a doctor of pharmacy student at the University of Tennessee, the college’s professional conduct committee received an anonymous complaint about her posts on social media.

The college reviewed her posts, which included racy rap lyrics and tight dresses, and concluded that they were vulgar and unprofessional. It threatened to expel her.

For the last four years, Ms. Diei has been fighting her school in court, arguing that her posts were fun and sex-positive, and unconnected to her status as a student. Now she has won a settlement: On either Wednesday or Thursday, she expects to receive a check for $250,000 — both vindication and relief, she said.

She has also graduated from pharmacy school at the university and is now a practicing pharmacist at a Walgreens in Memphis, a job where she says her comfort with her own sexuality has been an asset.

“Viagra, that’s a very, very big seller,” she said, chuckling. “Sexual lubricants, condoms, all of that. I can’t say every day somebody’s asking me about sexual products, but it’s fairly frequent across the age range.”

Her lawsuit against the university, filed in February 2021, tested the boundaries of free expression for students in the age of social media. With the pro bono help of a lawyer with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech group, Ms. Diei challenged the university’s authority to punish her for messages posted on her own account, on her own time, and not representing her as a student. The suit argued that the public university had violated her constitutional right of free expression “for no legitimate pedagogical reason.”