Charlie Kirk’s Family Confronts a Bad Utah Law. Indiana Might Be No Better.

By HE Staff

INDIANAPOLIS — In a notice of intent to sue filed on the eve of the 1 year anniversary of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, Charlie Kirk’s family by their legal counsel says Utah Valley University failed him before a rooftop gunman fired the shot that killed the Turning Point USA founder.

Their attorneys allege that university officials rejected additional police assistance, failed to secure nearby rooftops, lacked an adequate security plan and disregarded warnings from Kirk’s own security team.

One message may become especially important. When Kirk’s team raised concerns about rooftop access near the outdoor event, Utah Valley University Police Chief Jeffrey Long reportedly answered, “I got you covered.” The family argues that Kirk relied upon assurances that proved tragically empty. The case s framed well given the laws attempt to provide so-called sovereign immunity in most cases.

Yet the central question may never be whether the university was negligent. Utah law could prevent a jury from reaching that issue at all.

Under Utah’s Governmental Immunity Act, the state and its agencies retain broad protection against claims arising from assault or battery.

Because Kirk died from an intentional gunshot, Utah may argue that the family’s entire case arises from the murderer’s battery—even though the lawsuit would accuse university officials of their own independent security failures.

That is a bad law. It allows the government to invite a speaker onto public property, undertake responsibility for security, disregard a specific danger and then point to the killer as the reason the government cannot be held accountable. The murderer remains subject to criminal prosecution and personal civil liability, but the public institution that allegedly left its guest exposed may escape a trial.

But what if he was shot dead at an Indiana public university? Or if a similar case existed here?

Indiana’s Different Road to the Same Injustice

Would the result be different if Kirk had been killed under similar circumstances at Indiana University, Purdue University, Ball State University or another public Indiana campus?

Perhaps—but Indiana families should not take much comfort from the distinction.

Indiana does not appear to have Utah’s sweeping rule automatically immunizing the government whenever a case arises from an assault or battery. Indiana precedent instead recognizes that a family may sue for the government’s own negligence, rather than attempting to hold the government vicariously liable for the murderer’s conduct.

In Gary Community School Corp. v. Boyd, the family of a murdered student alleged that the school failed to exercise reasonable care and supervision. The Indiana Court of Appeals rejected the school corporation’s argument that the independent criminal act automatically created immunity. The family was complaining about the school’s own conduct, the court explained, not asking the school to answer for the killer’s conduct.

The court also rejected discretionary-function immunity because the school had not shown that its security decisions resulted from a genuine governmental policy-making process. That precedent suggests that a Kirk-style claim could at least survive Indiana’s equivalent of Utah’s courthouse door slamming shut.

The evidence described by Kirk’s family would be significant in Indiana. A specific warning about an accessible rooftop is far different from a vague allegation that the world is dangerous. An express assurance—“I got you covered”—could support the argument that campus officials undertook a particular responsibility and then performed it negligently. Evidence that administrators rejected additional officers, failed to monitor the rooftop and departed from ordinary security practices could further support a claim.

But the Indiana Tort Claims Act would give the university several powerful defenses. A public university could argue that security staffing, allocation of police resources and event planning were protected discretionary functions. It could also contend that the assassin’s independent criminal act, rather than any university omission, legally caused the death. The outcome could turn on whether the failure involved a high-level policy decision or negligent execution after officials assumed a defined security responsibility.

Indiana’s $700,000 Price Ceiling on a Human Life

Even if the Kirk family overcame immunity, proved negligence and persuaded a jury that the university’s failures contributed to the assassination, Indiana law would impose another extraordinary barrier.

The Indiana Tort Claims Act, requiring a much earlier notice before waiving of rights, generally caps the combined liability of all governmental entities and covered public employees at $700,000 for the injury or death of one person in one occurrence. It also prohibits punitive damages against the government.

Civil Rights case may be a better route since this was a hate crime? And could the AG or DOJ do that better?

That Indiana cap means Indiana might permit a family to enter the courthouse, endure years of litigation and prove that public officials negligently failed to protect a husband and father—only to have the law reduce governmental responsibility to $700,000. The same ceiling applies whether the victim is a child, a parent, a laborer, a nationally prominent speaker or the primary provider for a young family.

Are these limits the work of the life insurance industry lobbyists or frugal legislators, and we know they spent other people’s money frivolously—so likely the former, the message being everyone needs to buy life insurance and a lot of it, of course,

That low recovery figure is not a fair appraisal of Charlie Kirk’s life. Indiana law is rarely fair, it seems. It does not reflect his future earnings, the loss suffered by his wife and two children, the reach of the organization he built or the seriousness of any proven institutional failure. It is an artificial number selected by legislators to protect the public treasury.

Indiana’s cap has remained at $700,000 per person for causes of action accruing since Jan. 1, 2008. Nearly two decades of inflation have steadily reduced its real value while the cost of litigation, medical care and supporting a family has risen. Government’s protection has grown stronger simply because lawmakers have allowed the cap to stand still.

Claims against a private security contractor or another nongovernmental defendant ordinarily would not receive the same protection. Nor would the Indiana Tort Claims Act ordinarily control a claim against a private university such as Notre Dame. But at a state university, the institution and its covered employees could share one $700,000 ceiling, regardless of the number or gravity of their proven mistakes.

Accountability Should Not Depend on Who Owns the Campus

Sovereign immunity began with the ancient idea that the king could do no wrong. In a constitutional republic, government should not be able to promise protection, disregard known risks and then place itself beyond meaningful accountability.

Utah’s statute may deny the Kirk family a trial because a gunman committed a battery. Indiana’s law may allow a trial but sharply limit what a jury’s decision can mean. The mechanisms differ, but the public-policy message is disturbingly similar: when government fails, government decides in advance how little responsibility it must accept.

Indiana lawmakers should examine the Kirk case before a similar tragedy occurs here. At minimum, the General Assembly should substantially increase and index the governmental damages cap for inflation. It also should make clear that discretionary-function immunity does not cover the negligent execution of an accepted security responsibility after officials receive a specific warning and undertake to protect an invited guest.

Charlie Kirk’s alleged murderer must answer to the criminal law. But criminal punishment and governmental accountability are separate questions. A killer’s intentional act should not become a legal gift to a public institution whose own failures may have helped make that act possible.

The courthouse should determine what happened, who failed and what justice requires.

Utah law may prevent that inquiry. Indiana law might permit it—but then tell the victim’s family that, when government is responsible, a human life is worth no more than $700,000.

And so what’s new an Indiana court system under failed Chief Justice Loretta Rush incapable in nearly every regard in keeping up with reality.

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