NC high school student sues school district for censoring her Charlie Kirk tribute

Alliance Defending Freedom attorneys representing a North Carolina high school student and her parents filed a lawsuit Monday against the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education for censoring the student’s message and repeatedly violating her constitutional rights.

The junior at Ardrey Kell High School seeks to share her Christian faith and values with others at the school. After the assassination of Charlie Kirk on Sept. 10, she felt inspired to use her voice to commemorate Kirk’s strong public defense of Christianity in the public square. She sought permission from the school to paint a message on the school’s “spirit rock” in support of Kirk’s Christian message, and the school granted permission. But, within hours, school officials ordered her message to be censored and then engaged in efforts to publicly humiliate her and the friends who helped her, prompting the lawsuit.

“No student should be censored, punished, and shamed by school officials simply for sharing her views,” said ADF Senior Counsel Travis Barham. “Charlie Kirk boldly defended open and respectful discourse on school grounds literally until his last breath, and this courage inspired many across the country, including the student who painted the message on Ardrey Kell High School’s spirit rock. This situation goes beyond irony, however, as school officials illegally censored and threatened students for sharing a widely held message with which they happened to disagree. We are urging the court to hold the officials responsible for violating students’ constitutional rights to free speech, free exercise of religion, and due process.”

The student had seen other messages on the rock—ranging from support of NFL teams to Black Lives Matter—so after a brief phone call receiving permission to paint the rock on Sept. 12, the student, her parents, and two fellow students painted the rock with the words “Freedom 1776” and “Live Like Kirk—John 11:25” the next day around 4 p.m. By 8 p.m. the same day, the student learned from social media that officials ordered the “Live Like Kirk—John 11:25” portion to be painted over.

The next day, school officials sent out a school-wide e-mail accusing her of “vandalism” and said that law enforcement was conducting an investigation; this statement aired on the local news station as well. And the day after that, officials called the student out of class to write an official statement describing her actions and forced her to show them her phone logs. School officials never obtained permission from parents to go through her phone, nor did they inform the students or parents about their constitutional right to remain silent and contact an attorney during a criminal investigation.

A few days later, school officials unveiled a Spirit Rock Speech Code that only allowed “positive school spirit” and messages that “uphold the inclusive values of our school community,” allowing the officials to subjectively decide what speech is “positive.” It also explicitly bans students from expressing religious messages on the spirit rock. When the officials formally concluded that the student, her parents, and her friends had not committed vandalism, they quietly closed the investigation with no apology and then released a statement saying they never accused or investigated her of anything.

“[School officials] have unconstitutionally censored [the student]’s speech that the First Amendment protects, retaliated against her for exercising her First Amendment rights, adopted new policies that violate her First Amendment rights, violated the unconstitutional conditions doctrine, ignored her Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights, and have deprived her of due process and equal protection of the laws,” the lawsuit explains.

ADF attorneys filed G.S. v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of North Carolina, Charlotte Division. Dowling PLLC attorney Craig D. Schauer, one of more than 5,000 attorneys in the ADF Attorney Network, serves as co-counsel for the family.

• Pronunciation guide: Barham (BEAR’-um)

The ADF Center for Academic Freedom is dedicated to protecting First Amendment and related freedoms for students and faculty so that everyone can freely participate in the marketplace of ideas without fear of government censorship.

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