A Clay County School Board member who doubles as a Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department firefighter is taking the City of Jacksonville to federal court, turning an off-duty social media video into a constitutional battle over free speech.
Robert Alvero and his attorney, Anthony Sabatini, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city, arguing that city officials violated Alvero’s First Amendment rights when JFRD disciplined him over personal commentary published online.
The legal dispute goes back to a video published on Alvero’s personal Facebook account in December 2025. In the video, Alvero said that 80 percent of his encounters with African Americans were negative, describing those experiences as rude, nasty, and problematic. In the video, he also referenced philosophies associated with white nationalist political commentator Nick Fuentes and spoke openly about harboring racial bias toward people sharing his own Cuban heritage…