An Arizona woman is taking legal action against a city after being arrested over a Game of Thrones GIF she posted on Facebook.
Kathleen Tierney, 56, of Tucson, has filed a lawsuit against the City of Tempe stemming from an online incident that took place in August 2025.
According to court filings cited by The Arizona Republic, Tierney argues that the city violated her rights under the First, Fourth, and 14th Amendments.
Police went to her home the following month after interpreting the social media post as a possible threat, an allegation Tierney disputes.
The exchange began when Tierney posted the GIF on the public Facebook page of Tempe Councilman Randy Keating ahead of a city council meeting.
The clip came from season six, episode 10 of Game of Thrones, showing the destruction of the Sept of Baelor in King’s Landing while Cersei Lannister watches from a balcony after setting the explosion in motion.
Tierney captioned the post: “Watching tonight’s council meeting.”
Authorities treated the upload as a potential threat, leading to the evacuation of council chambers and the meeting being moved online.
“Threats like this not only endanger lives, they disrupt civic engagement and silence the voices of the people we serve. We will not allow intimidation to interfere with democracy in our city,” Police Chief Ken McCoy said at the time.
Tierney has maintained that the post was not threatening and says it was meant as political commentary connected to debate over a city parks ordinance.
Records show Keating told officers he did not want to “overreact or under-react” after seeing the GIF. The report also indicated the councilman was a fan of the HBO series.
The filing further says Tierney told officers she partly chose the GIF because Keating had named his dog after a character from Game of Thrones.
Along with arresting her at home, the city also identified Tierney publicly in a news release accusing her of disrupting civic engagement, interfering with democracy, intimidation, silencing residents, and endangering lives.
Tierney told The Arizona Republic she believed police may have assumed her profile was a fake account because she did not use it to share photos of friends, family, or holidays.
She added: “I am just not a Facebook person.”
Police sought to bring misdemeanor disorderly conduct and felony computer-tampering charges.
Those charges were not pursued by the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, which declined to prosecute and said there was “no reasonable likelihood of conviction”.
In February 2026, Tierney also served Tempe with a $3 million notice of claim, alleging speech retaliation, false arrest, defamation, abuse of process, and constitutional violations. The claim said she lost a $121,000-a-year job and suffered reputational and emotional harm after the arrest and publicity surrounding it.
By then, however, Tierney had already lost her six-figure job because of the fallout from the case, according to the complaint.
She is now suing the City of Tempe, alleging defamation, retaliation, abuse of process, and false arrest.
In the lawsuit, Tierney says the arrest caused “paralyzing embarrassment” and seriously harmed her reputation.
The City of Tempe has previously said officers followed procedure and that Tierney was treated no differently from anyone else in the community.