Arrowhead High School let graduating seniors post Venmo requests beside their names and photos.
Sarianne Beronja wanted to post the verse that had carried her through four years of high school.
What Arrowhead banned the night before graduation put the district in the crosshairs of Wisconsin's top First Amendment law firm.
Graduation Slideshow Approved Venmo Requests Then Banned a Bible Verse
Arrowhead Union High School District gave its Class of 2026 graduates a personal message slot beside their photo in the commencement slideshow.
Students filled those slots with humor, song lyrics, thank-you notes – and Venmo requests soliciting classmates for cash.
Sarianne Beronja chose Proverbs 3:6: "In all your ways, acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your path."
An associate principal rejected it at 11:46 PM – less than twelve hours before she walked across the stage.
"My faith helped shape who I am," Beronja told Fox News Digital.
She tried a fallback: a brief line thanking God for being "beside me through these last four years."
Rejected too.
Superintendent Conrad Farner defended the decision by citing Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier – a 1988 Supreme Court ruling allowing schools to restrict school-sponsored expression.
The graduation slideshow, Farner said, was district-sponsored speech and not a public forum.
Allowing religious content, he argued, would create a chaotic environment where families arrive with "signs and buttons and flags."
His announced solution: cancel the slideshow entirely for all future graduating classes.
Rather than allow one student to acknowledge God in a personal message, Farner chose to punish every future Arrowhead graduate – no slideshow for anyone, ever again.
First Amendment Lawyers Demand Arrowhead End Religious Discrimination Against Christian Student
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty reviewed the decision and sent a formal demand letter to the Arrowhead district.
Their legal argument takes thirty seconds to explain.
Arrowhead created a forum.
The district approved humor, song lyrics, expressions of gratitude, and Venmo requests from classmates.
Then it pulled Sarianne Beronja's entry for one reason: it named God.
WILL argued that once a school opens such a forum, it "cannot exclude religious viewpoints while permitting comparable non-religious speech."
Deputy counsel Cory Brewer said the district's appeal to the separation of church and state is no justification for erasing religious viewpoints from student expression.
Beronja's mother, Lora Engel, raised a second problem with the district's reasoning.
In 2024, a graduating Arrowhead student included a Bible verse in the identical slideshow – and the school allowed it.
Superintendent Farner acknowledged the inconsistency, admitting his administration failed to enforce the rule consistently in its first year.
The school board sat without comment when Beronja addressed them at a subsequent school board meeting.
WILL is demanding Arrowhead rescind any policy or practice that singles out religious expression for exclusion.
If the district fails to comply, WILL will take legal action.
Supreme Court Rulings on Student Religious Expression Back This Wisconsin Student
This is not a hard case.
Public schools have run the same play for decades: invite every form of student expression, then quietly shut the door the moment a student says "Jesus."
Michigan school officials barred valedictorian Elizabeth Turner from referencing her faith in Christ at her commencement.
A Pennsylvania school district told Moriah Bridges to strip her graduation speech of any faith-based content.
Colorado nursing graduate Karissa Erickson was ordered to remove all references to Jesus from her remarks – until the Alliance Defending Freedom sent one letter and the school reversed course.
One letter.
Leftist school administrators have turned "neutrality" into a one-way filter – every viewpoint welcome except Christian faith.
The Supreme Court has been systematically eliminating the legal cover these schools rely on.
The 2022 Kennedy ruling confirmed that private religious expression does not vanish at the schoolhouse gate.
Last year, a unanimous Court ruled in Catholic Charities Bureau v. Wisconsin that Wisconsin cannot treat religious organizations differently from secular ones – the same state where Arrowhead just tried exactly that.
WILL's court filing will rest on one line: begging classmates for cash was permitted; acknowledging God was not.
Sarianne Beronja walked across that stage without her verse.
The school's lawyers already know how this ends.
Sources:
- Kristine Parks, "Wisconsin Student Alleges School Barred Her from Using Bible Verse at Graduation," Fox News, July 1, 2026.
- Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, "WILL Challenges Arrowhead School District for Religious Censorship," Press Release, July 1, 2026.
- "School Banned Student From Saying 'Jesus' And Bible Verse In Speech Until Nonprofit Got Involved," Daily Caller, May 15, 2018.
