Perkins Coie lawyer is out of a job, apparently because of post criticizing Charlie Kirk after his shooting death
Perkins Coie has fired a lawyer for a social media post criticizing conservative political activist Charlie Kirk after his shooting death Wednesday during an appearance at a college campus event in Utah. (Image from Shutterstock)
Updated: Perkins Coie has fired a lawyer for a social media post criticizing conservative political activist Charlie Kirk after his shooting death Wednesday during an appearance at a college campus event in Utah.
Perkins Coie confirmed that it had fired one of its employees for online comments, report Bloomberg Law, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Times.
A Perkins Coie spokesman provided this statement to the ABA Journal: “We are aware of the comments posted on social media by a former Perkins Coie employee in the wake of Charlie Kirk’s death. These comments do not reflect the views of our firm, and the individual’s conduct in posting them fell far short of the expectations we have of everyone who works here. This is not who we are, and the individual was separated from the firm with immediate effect. We offer our deepest sympathies to Mr. Kirk’s family.”
The Washington Times identified the lawyer as insurance litigator Bradley Dlatt. Any mention of Dlatt has been removed from the Perkins Coie website, but a May 2023 press release said he was a counsel with the law firm’s insurance recovery law practice.
A Journal email seeking comment sent to Dlatt’s email address at Perkins Coie was returned with an automatic reply saying Dlatt is no longer with the firm as of Sept. 12.
Perkins Coie did not comment in response to the Journal’s request for confirmation that Dlatt was the employee who was fired.
Ted Frank, the director of litigation and a senior attorney at the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, a nonprofit public interest firm, reproduced a post by Dlatt on X, formerly known as Twitter, and questioned whether it was the post that got Dlatt fired.
Dlatt’s comments were in a private Facebook post.
The Washington Times quoted from the same post by Dlatt and said it led to the firing.
“Charlie Kirk got famous as one of America’s leading spreaders of hatred, misinformation and intolerance,” Dlatt reportedly wrote. “The current political moment—where an extremist Supreme Court and feckless Republican Congress are enabling a Republican president to become a tyrant and building him a modern-day Gestapo for assaulting black and brown folks—is a result of Charlie Kirk’s ‘contributions’ to American media and politics.
“That said,” Dlatt continued in the second paragraph, “no one in this country should be murdered for their political speech. Wishing comfort to his wife and children in this difficult time.”
Perkins Coie has been in the news for challenging a punitive executive order by President Donald Trump that targeted the firm for its representation of Democratic Party 2016 presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and for stances in litigation. The federal government is appealing a federal judge’s ruling for Perkins Coie on First Amendment and other constitutional grounds.
Did Perkins Coie's Bradley Dlatt say something besides this? The first paragraph is entirely wrong, and the third paragraph is just ignorant (no gun control short of North Korean levels would have prevented this; no Western country bans this gun), but it's just dumb opinions and… pic.twitter.com/Iybgg45BRJ
— tedfrank (@tedfrank) September 12, 2025
Updated Sept. 22 at 12:19 p.m. to report that Bradley Dlatt’s comments were in a private Facebook post.
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