From Christensen v. Carter, decided today by Judge Edmund Sargus (S.D. Ohio):
Mr. Christensen enrolled at OSU as an undergraduate student in the fall of 2024. At that time, he had established an online presence as a political activist and social media influencer. Mr. Christensen has more than three million followers on the social media platform known as TikTok. Mr. Christensen identifies himself as a strong supporter of the movement for Palestinian liberation and routinely posts videos of himself commenting on Palestinian rights and the Israel-Palestine conflict across a range of social media platforms, including TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and Substack. At the close of the spring semester of his freshman year (around the end of April 2025), Mr. Christensen left OSU's campus and the state of Ohio, and did not plan to return until the fall 2025 semester.
This lawsuit centers around two videos that Mr. Christensen posted on TikTok on May 22, 2025, after leaving OSU's campus for the summer….
The first video relates to the deaths of two employees of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. The employees were shot and killed by Elias Rodriguez on May 21, 2025, as they exited an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
Initially, Mr. Christensen condemned the shooting in a video that he posted on TikTok on May 22, 2025. Later that day, Mr. Christensen posted another video to TikTok withdrawing his condemnation (the "Rodriguez Video"), which is one of the two videos at issue in this case. In the Rodriguez Video, Mr. Christensen begins by stating: "I take it back. I do not condemn the elimination of those two Zionist officials, who worked at the Israeli embassy last night." Relevant to this lawsuit, Mr. Christensen used the terms "resistance" and "escalation" in the Rodriguez Video, which come from the following statements:
