Huntington Beach Union High School District officials said on Monday, March 3, former NFL punter Chris Kluwe, who garnered national attention after he was arrested last month for his protest of a MAGA-referencing plaque to be installed at a city library, was fired because of a social media post he made on Bluesky following the arrest.

District officials said in a news release Monday that Kluwe was fired from his position as a freshman football coach at Edison High School based on a Bluesky post he made “suggesting violence” and not because of his comments protesting MAGA at a City Council meeting that brought broad attention.

Kluwe made a post on Bluesky following his arrest asking people to “Stop (expletive) with the library. That’s what the City Council is doing. The library is great, as are the people who work there. Go (expletive) with the City Council. Find where they work, and blow *those* places up.”

Including a screenshot of Kluwe’s post, the district’s news release said, “While HBUHSD values the right to free speech, the district does not condone or tolerate language that promotes or suggests violence in any form.”

Kluwe said in an interview that his post on Bluesky was asking for people “to please stop blowing up the phone lines and inboxes of the library because it wasn’t the library’s decision to put the plaque up.”

The district, Kluwe said, took that post out of context, which was about him asking people to stop “review bombing” the city library online and calling Huntington Beach librarians to express their frustration.

The original post, which was later deleted, was paired with a video of Kluwe speaking with people from the organizations Pride at the Pier and Protect HB.

Executive Director of Pride at the Pier Kanan Durham in that video said people need to stop “review bombing” the library.

“If you want to do something, find out where the councilmembers work and go review bomb them,” Kluwe said in the video shared with the post.

“I believe this is an after-the-fact justification, as opposed to the reason why they actually fired me,” Kluwe said Monday. He said it was misleading of the district to not include the posted video in its news release discussing his firing.

Kluwe said the post was not brought up at the meeting he had with school officials on Thursday, during which he said he was told he was fired. In an interview with The Orange County Register after, Kluwe said Edison’s athletic director and the assistant principal of supervision told him, “Based on what’s going on we just feel it’s too much attention and we have to let you go.”

Kluwe’s firing was questioned by U.S. Rep. Dave Min on Friday, who sent a letter to school officials asking them to explain further what led to his dismissal. In that letter, Min raised First Amendment free speech concerns with Kluwe’s firing.

Kluwe was arrested at the Feb. 18 Huntington Beach council meeting after he took a few steps toward the dais following his comments during the public comments portion of the meeting. He was detained by several police officers. His arrest was a protest of a plaque to be installed at the Central Library with a MAGA acrostic.

Kluwe said none of his followers took what he said on Bluesky as a call to violence, and he’s been promoting peaceful civil disobedience since his arrest.

A few days after the post went up, Kluwe said a Huntington Beach police detective called and “seemed very insistent on trying to claim that it was a call to violence.”

“I had to repeatedly correct her as to the actual context to the post itself,” Kluwe said. “But out of an overabundance of caution, I told the detective, ‘You know what, if it will make you feel better I will take the post down.’”

The school district declined to comment further on Kluwe’s firing “due to personnel matters.”