Charlie Kirk's family has filed a wrongful death notice against Utah Valley University alleging preventable security failures, but legal experts say a sweeping state immunity statute could stop the case before it starts.
Attorneys for the Kirk family filed the notice on September 9, 2026, one day before the first anniversary of the conservative leader's assassination, naming UVU, former university president Astrid Tuminez, campus police chief Jeffrey Long, and the state of Utah. The filing alleges the university declined additional police officers, failed to address concerns raised by Kirk's own security team, and had no adequate security plan for his campus appearance. Kirk, the 31-year-old co-founder of Turning Point USA, was shot and killed while speaking at UVU's Losee Center in Orem, Utah, on September 10, 2025. He left behind his wife, Erika, and two small children.
The notice is a required legal step before a formal lawsuit can proceed in Utah. But two legal experts who reviewed the filing say the family faces a formidable obstacle that has nothing to do with the strength of their evidence: Utah's government immunity statute, which grants state entities broad protection from lawsuits, even in cases involving alleged recklessness.
The scope of the alleged security breakdown is striking. AP News reported that only six officers staffed the event, which drew approximately 3,000 attendees. There was no drone surveillance of rooftops, no coordination with local law enforcement, no bag checks, and no metal detectors. Kirk family attorney D. Loren Washburn argued in the filing that the risk of a rooftop shooter should have been "especially top-of-mind" given the attempted assassination of President Trump, Kirk's close friend and political ally, by a rooftop gunman the previous year.
Prosecutors say Tyler Robinson, 23, fired the fatal shot from the Losee Center. Security footage described in the filing allegedly shows an individual believed to be Robinson using a staircase to access a roof facing the area where Kirk was speaking just after noon that day. The Sorenson Center, a building directly west of the Losee Center, was a known concern: UVU Police Chief Long had acknowledged worries about rooftop access to that structure before the event.
Robinson turned himself in a day after the shooting. He is charged with aggravated murder and faces trial with the death penalty still on the table. A judge ordered the case to proceed toward trial on September 1.
Neama Rahmani, president of West Coast Trial Lawyers, told the New York Post that a message from UVU Police Chief Long to Kirk's security team could be the family's most powerful piece of evidence. Long's message acknowledged concerns about rooftop access and told the team, "I got you covered." Rahmani said that statement may establish that the university assumed a specific duty to protect Kirk, and then failed to meet it.
Rahmani, who has handled security-failure cases against government entities, explained why that distinction matters:
"In cases where you have the government taking on a duty, that tends to be better than simply arguing that the government has a duty to protect everyone because we know that murders happen all the time, and you can't sue the government just because someone is killed."
Washburn, the Kirk family's attorney, put it more bluntly in the filing. The university's failures, he wrote, resulted "in a situation that rendered Mr. Kirk helpless before his assassin." A second attorney for the family, Brett Parkinson, told the Washington Examiner that Kirk's killing was "entirely preventable."
UVU issued a brief statement through a spokesperson: "We are aware of the notice of claim. UVU addresses legal matters consistent with our established processes. Our focus remains on supporting our campus community." The university's former president, Tuminez, stepped down in May 2026 after eight years in the role. The criminal case against Robinson has revealed confessions, physical evidence, and a trail of digital communications pointing to his involvement.
For all the evidence the Kirk family has assembled, the legal terrain in Utah is hostile to their claim. University of Utah law professor Tenielle Brown explained the core problem:
"Unfortunately, Charlie Kirk's family is going to have a very difficult time prevailing in a wrongful death case in Utah. And that's because Utah's government immunity statute is phrased in such a way that says even if the state and UVU were reckless, they retain immunity in cases that arise out of a battery, and that would include gunshot wounds."
The statute grants government entities, including their officers and employees, broad immunity from lawsuits arising from the performance or failure to perform discretionary functions. It also covers claims involving assault, battery, false imprisonment, malicious prosecution, and civil rights violations. In plain terms: even if UVU's security was grossly inadequate, the university may be shielded from liability because the underlying harm, a shooting, qualifies as a battery under state law.
Brown called the statute unusually broad. "Most states don't have that broad of a statute," she said. She pointed to a 2005 Utah Supreme Court ruling, Wagner v. Utah, in which the court held that civil battery does not require an intent to cause physical or psychological injury, widening the immunity shield further.
That same ruling, however, contained a notable signal. Brown described the court's message to lawmakers:
"The court said, it may not be prudent for the state to continue to retain immunity here. And they're kind of signaling to the legislature that the legislature should probably change the statute to allow for suits in cases like Charlie Kirk's."
The legislature never acted on that signal. More than two decades later, the statute remains unchanged.
Brown cited a prior case that illustrates just how high the bar is. In 2010, Mika Scott, a 19-year-old UVU student, was raped by Shawn Leonard, a prisoner with a violent criminal record who had escaped from a work-release program. Scott sued Utah County and the Utah County Sheriff's Office, arguing that officials had failed to screen inmates for violence and failed to police the boundaries of job sites to prevent escapes.
Brown said Scott could have demonstrated carelessness and possibly recklessness on the part of the government. It did not matter. Because the underlying claim arose out of a battery, the immunity statute barred recovery. The legal framework that governs these cases has remained rigid even as the human costs have mounted.
The parallel to the Kirk case is direct. The family's attorneys are not arguing that UVU pulled the trigger. They are arguing that university officials made a series of reckless decisions, declining extra officers, ignoring rooftop threats, skipping basic screening measures, that left Kirk exposed. But under Utah law, the fact that the harm came from a shooting may be enough to immunize every official involved.
Brown raised a deeper problem with the immunity doctrine as applied to cases like this one. The traditional justification for sovereign immunity is that voters can hold government officials accountable at the ballot box. If a governor or legislator fails, the public can vote them out. But the officials named in the Kirk filing, a university president and a campus police chief, are not elected.
"The president of UVU, the campus police, those people are not elected, and so if you were to say sovereign immunity is all about letting people decide whether they're state actors or careless at the ballot box, then you vote them out of office. That doesn't work. That argument doesn't for the UVU president because nobody can vote them out of office, nobody is having any political check on the campus police."
The broader fallout from Kirk's assassination has rippled through the community and beyond, but the officials whose decisions are now under scrutiny face no mechanism of public accountability short of a civil lawsuit, the very remedy the immunity statute may block.
Tuminez stepped down from the UVU presidency months after Kirk's death. Long remains named in the filing. Fox News Digital reached out to the Kirk family's lawyers for comment but received no response. The family's attorneys have not publicly stated whether they intend to press forward with a formal lawsuit despite the legal headwinds.
Rahmani acknowledged the difficulty of the case but noted that the specific facts, Long's direct assurance to Kirk's security team, the documented refusal of additional officers, the absence of even basic screening, distinguish it from a general claim that government should have prevented a crime. The family's legal filing lays out a detailed account of institutional failure at every level of the university's security apparatus.
A man told campus police he was worried about rooftop access. The chief said he had it covered. Six officers showed up for 3,000 people. Nobody checked bags. Nobody flew a drone. And a 31-year-old father of two was shot to death at a podium. If that record cannot survive a motion to dismiss in Utah, the legislature owes the state's citizens an explanation for the law it has refused to fix.
