Christian students are finding out their constitutional rights disappear the moment they try expressing their beliefs.
School administrators who preach tolerance suddenly turn into speech police when faith enters the picture.
And a Colorado teen faced persecution for showing her faith at school that should alarm every parent in America.
Faith expression becomes the new battleground
Christians are under assault in government schools across America.
Administrators who scream about diversity and inclusion suddenly turn into speech police the moment a student tries expressing their faith.
Sophia Shumaker found that out the hard way at Rampart High School in Colorado Springs.¹
The senior wanted to participate in a school tradition where students pay to decorate their parking spots.
Shumaker submitted a design inspired by the 23rd Psalm featuring a shepherd with a staff tending sheep along with a Bible verse.²
School officials rejected it immediately, citing guidelines that ban "offensive, negative, rude, gang-related, political, or religious" content.³
So Shumaker tried again with a simpler design showing fish with one swimming against the crowd and the text of 1 Corinthians 13:4 about love.
That got rejected too.
"My identity, everything about me, is through Christ," Shumaker told KKTV. "I just wanted that to be represented in my parking space."⁴
The school made her paint something else entirely or lose her spot.
But Shumaker wasn't about to let government bureaucrats tell her she couldn't express her faith on her own paid parking space.
First Liberty steps in to defend religious freedom
Shumaker contacted First Liberty Institute, the nation's largest legal organization dedicated exclusively to defending religious liberty.
The timing couldn't have been better since First Liberty had just won an identical case in New York.
Just months earlier, another Christian student named Sabrina Steffans faced the exact same religious discrimination at Grand Island High School near Buffalo.⁵
School officials rejected three different designs from Steffans before finally forcing her to remove all Bible references and mentions of God.
First Liberty sent a demand letter and within a week, the school completely reversed course and let Steffans use her original faith-based design.⁶
That victory inspired Shumaker to fight back against the censorship at Rampart High School.
"Sophia was inspired by our client Sabrina Steffans," First Liberty noted. "After First Liberty helped Sabrina paint her paid parking space with her faith-centered designs, Sophia called First Liberty asking if we could defend her right to have faith-based imagery and Bible verses."⁷
Senior Counsel Keisha Russell didn't mince words about the constitutional violations.
"It is unconstitutional for the school to reject Sophia's parking space design due to its religious imagery," Russell stated. "The Constitution protects private, religious speech—even when it occurs on public school property."⁸
The smoking gun that exposed the school's hypocrisy
First Liberty's October 22 demand letter to Academy School District 20 dropped a bombshell that the school couldn't explain away.
The legal team discovered that while Rampart High School banned religious messages, other schools throughout the same district allowed them.⁹
That inconsistency proved the parking spaces were private student speech, not government speech.
"The district's inconsistent policies demonstrate that the seniors' messages on the parking spots in Academy School District 20, including those at Rampart, are private speech, not government speech," the letter explained. "Therefore, the district cannot deny Ms. Shumaker's private, religious speech without violating the First Amendment."¹⁰
The district couldn't argue that religious expression on parking spaces violated the Constitution when multiple schools in their own district permitted it.
School officials tried claiming they never heard from Shumaker's family before First Liberty's letter arrived.
"Academy District 20 was not contacted by a family or student about this concern and did not receive the attorney's letter prior to Oct. 22," Chief Communication Officer Mark Belcher said in a statement.¹¹
But that excuse fell flat when you consider Shumaker submitted two separate designs that both got rejected specifically because of religious content.
The district knew exactly what they were doing when they censored her faith.
Complete victory for religious freedom
First Liberty gave the district until October 31 to reverse course and allow Shumaker to repaint her space with her original shepherd design.
The school district caved within days.
On October 28, Academy School District 20 announced they were "realigning" their practice for all District 20 students.¹²
"For the remainder of the school year, schools will allow artwork based on a student's viewpoint around topics such as religion, as long as the design follows the rules below and doesn't disrupt the school day," the district stated.¹³
Shumaker won approval to paint her original design with the shepherd, staff, sheep, and Bible verse.
The district even offered to let her repaint her spot and opened the program to other students who didn't initially participate.
This represents the second major victory for First Liberty on parking space religious freedom in just three months.
Schools got the message loud and clear that they can't discriminate against Christian students expressing their faith.
The Supreme Court settled this issue more than 50 years ago in Tinker v. Des Moines, ruling that students don't give up their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door.¹⁴
More recently, Kennedy v. Bremerton School District reaffirmed that teachers and students are free to express their faith without threat of censorship or punishment.¹⁵
But radical leftists running government schools keep trying to erase Christianity from the public square.
They preach tolerance and diversity until a Christian student wants to share their faith.
Then suddenly all those progressive values disappear and the speech police show up.
Shumaker's victory shows what happens when believers refuse to surrender their constitutional rights.
Christians need to stop backing down and start fighting back against religious discrimination in schools.
¹ First Liberty Institute, "Colorado High School Rejects Senior's Parking Space Design Due to Religious Imagery," October 22, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ KKTV, "Rampart High School senior says faith-based parking space design was rejected," October 23, 2025.
⁵ First Liberty Institute, "High School Senior Wins Battle to Display Bible Verses on Parking Spot," August 29, 2025.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ First Liberty Institute, "No Space for Faith? Another High School Senior Told She Can't Decorate Parking Spot with Bible Reference," October 23, 2025.
⁸ First Liberty Institute, "Colorado High School Rejects Senior's Parking Space Design Due to Religious Imagery," October 22, 2025.
⁹ Ibid.
¹⁰ Ibid.
¹¹ KKTV, "Colorado Springs senior's faith-based parking space design approved after initial rejection," October 28, 2025.
¹² Ibid.
¹³ Ibid.
¹⁴ First Liberty Institute, "No Space for Faith? Another High School Senior Told She Can't Decorate Parking Spot with Bible Reference," October 23, 2025.
¹⁵ Ibid.
