Tennessee Grad Student Expelled for Sharing ‘Vulgar’ Beyoncé and Cardi B Lyrics Wins $250K in Free Speech Battle
In 2019, while attending the University of Tennessee School of Pharmacy, Kimberly Diei was the subject of an investigation for her social media activity following an anonymous complaint. A year later, following a second investigation, Diei was expelled by the university’s professional conduct committee for violating “various professionalism codes.”
Diei was not accused of any crime. No bullying was alleged. She had simply referenced some spicy lyrics under her screen name, “KimmyKasi,” on her private social media pages that made no mention of the school she attended. The university deemed them too “sexual,” “crude,” or “vulgar.”
“I wasn’t about to let my university get away with silencing me or any other student for speaking our truth,” Diei said. “Staying positive while fighting for my rights for years wasn’t easy, but it was necessary. We all need to speak up when someone tries to take our rights away — our voice is way too powerful to let anyone shut it down.”
In one of the offending tweets, Diei commented on a trending Twitter discussion about the song “WAP” by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion, suggesting lyrics for a possible remix. In another, she posted a selfie and included lyrics from Beyoncé’s “Partition.”
Diei, now a pharmacist living in Memphis, successfully appealed the pharmacy college committee’s decision weeks after it was issued on Sept. 2, 2020, and subsequently filed a federal lawsuit alleging that her school was “violating her constitutional rights by policing her personal, off-campus expression on social media.”
This month, more than five years after she was first investigated, Diei’s legal battle finally concluded. The university agreed to settle with Diei and pay her $250,000, $70,000 of which will go to her attorneys with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression.
“This ruling confirms what I’ve known all along,” Diei told The Tennessean. “I have a right to express myself in my private life that’s separate from school, and so do my classmates. I enrolled in pharmacy school to learn, not to have my taste in music and my thoughts on culture policed.”
The 2021 lawsuit against officials with the University of Tennessee system argued the pharmacy school “cannot police and punish the protected expression of students like Kimberly Diei simply because officials do not like or understand it.”
Colleges and universities are not “enclaves immune from the sweep of the First Amendment,” the suit continued.
Diesi, who at the time had nearly 20,000 followers on Instagram and another 1,600 on Twitter, used the accounts as vehicles where she could “more fully express herself in the public arena,” her lawsuit states. Many of the posts were sex-positive but never violated either of the platform’s terms of service.
The federal suit was dismissed in 2023 after Diei received her pharmacy degree, rendering several of the arguments moot. In September 2024, she filed an appeal through her lawyer, Greg Greubel, of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression.
“Because [Diei] plausibly alleged a free speech violation, we reverse in part and remand,” the appeals court ruled.
Diei’s speech was “clearly protected” by the First Amendment, the court ruled, adding that previous Supreme Court precedent and prior Sixth Circuit rulings put the issue “beyond debate.”
Greubel said the decision sends a clear message to colleges and universities everywhere.
“There is nothing unprofessional about students expressing love of hip-hop and their sexuality on social media,” he said. “Kim has proven something FIRE has said for 25 years: The First Amendment robustly protects students’ rights to have a voice outside of school, even if college administrators don’t like what they have to say.”
