This is what “wokeness” has come to—shaming middle school students for expressing their joy in their personal relationship with Jesus Christ because it is considered “offensive.”  This was a clear violation of this student’s First Amendment rights and an affront to the religious liberties rooted deeply in the history and culture of the United States.

Within the first year of the ACLJ’s founding, our Chief Counsel Jay Sekulow was already fighting at the United States Supreme Court for students’ right to religious freedom under the First Amendment within the public school system in Board of Education v. Mergens (1990). And we won.

Unfortunately, against clear Supreme Court precedent, there has been a new threat to students’ liberties due to an increasingly “woke” culture that silences our children and their faith while at school.

Just last month a public school drama teacher in Florida specifically went after a middle school student for including a reference to Jesus in her monologue assignment.  This particular monologue, written by the student, addressed the hardship of the speaker’s medical condition. The monologue ended with this discussion:

Question: “How can you be so happy with this condition??”

Speaker’s answer: “I feel Jesus accepts me for who I am and that’s what keeps me going every day.”

The student was so proud to share this personal and important discussion as a part of her monologue, and she was rightly concerned when the teacher told her she had to rewrite the assignment to exclude any mention of religion.

This specific monologue assignment had no limitations as to the topic or content, and students were told to create the monologue “in their own words.” However, the teacher proceeded to tell the student to rewrite her monologue as the teacher’s classroom has a “no religious reference” policy.

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