Arkansas school stops censoring student evangelism, pledges retraining after Gov. Sanders' threat

Four in five Arkansans identify as Christians, with fully half of The Natural State's residents identifying as evangelical Protestants specifically, according to the Pew Research Center's 2023-24 religious landscape study. 

Yet it took the Republican governor's intervention to convince a public school based in Walmart's backyard to let a student, inspired by the evangelism-heavy memorial service for 31-year-old Charlie Kirk, ask his classmates whether they knew their eternal destination.

Bentonville's Arkansas Connections Academy backed down three hours after Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she had instructed the state Department of Education to investigate the virtual school for cutting off 11th-grader Zion Ramos from the daily half-hour "Social Time" over Zoom because he evangelized classmates, his lawyers claimed.

First Liberty Institute said ARCA, as it's known, agreed to its demands in the wake of Sanders' announcement, letting Ramos share his faith for three minutes in a future Social Time, promising officials "will support the free speech and free exercise rights of students" going forward, and agreeing to complete religious liberty training.

A subsequent fundraising pitch by the religious liberty law firm emphasized ARCA backed down within 72 hours of First Liberty's Sept. 30 legal threat letter, noting Sanders' involvement but not her effect on the timeline for ARCA's reversal.

ARCA staff will go through the Respect Project, which says it's analogous to human resources or professional development modules. 

The half-hour virtual lesson quotes from the U.S. Department of Education's guidance on constitutionally protected prayer and religious expression in public schools, released in the Biden administration; shows research on "the value of students’ religious upbringing as a social, emotional, and learning asset;" and links to classroom materials for teachers.

The Respect Project doesn't say who's behind it except for two names, Marty Cutrone and Todd Richardson, who are two of the three principals at Free to Speak, "a student movement of Gateways to Better Education, a nonprofit Christ-centered organization that has been equipping Christians in public schools for over three decades."

Neither ARCA nor First Liberty made available ARCA's acceptance of the terms demanded in the letter, but ARCA told The Center Square its "administration is dedicated to ensuring that every student has the opportunity to express their viewpoint in a respectful environment."

Executive Director Nicole Stephens said it was "exploring training opportunities to help prepare all our educators with guidance on moderating student conversations" and it will provide "a timely response to the letter" from First Liberty.

Shut down Zoom entirely after he mentioned 'the Lord Jesus Christ'

The law firm's letter said teacher Kelsey Reid muted Ramos, a National Honors Society member who has attended the school since its founding a decade earlier, and removed him from Social Time after he asked peers whether they wanted to go to "heaven or hell."

This shows a content-based decision by Reid because Social Time is comparable to students chatting at lunch, in the hallway or a playfield, and teachers including Reid are supposed to intervene or mute students only if their speech is "violent, vulgar, or obscene," First Liberty said.

Conversation subjects include "current events, hairstyles, pets, relationships, and LGBTQ-related conversation," and one student "even showed off her new pocketknife and was not muted," the letter said.

"We don’t know how long we have," whether "today, tomorrow, a month, or even years from now," Ramos told his peers, "but when our time is up, all we will have is eternity … And we need to decide where we want to spend it," heaven or hell.

After Reid's surprise muting "without any warning or explanation," Ramos unmuted himself and "tried to explain that he had a right to speak" during a "non-educational session," the letter said. Reid cut him off again mid-sentence after Ramos said his peers "can accept the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts," removed Ramos entirely and shut down Zoom a minute later.

She messaged Ramos that she removed him from Social Time "due to the manner in which you were sharing," not the "information" itself, and that he was using the finite time as a "speaking platform." Reid suggested he "express" himself using the chat function, which is widely ignored by the 100-plus students on the call, First Liberty said.

"Zion spoke for less than two minutes in a calm, peaceful, conversational tone" and other students "commonly share about secular topics for significantly longer without being muted or censored," the letter said.

ARCA violated its First Amendment obligations as confirmed two years earlier by the Supreme Court in upholding a high school football coach's right to pray on the field immediately after games, the firm said, quoting the Kennedy decision on the free speech clause's "overlapping protection for expressive religious activities" also protected by the free exercise clause.

Because Reid "muted him, removed him from the class, and then offered post-hoc, pretexual rationalizations for her unconstitutional behavior," she violated both clauses, the firm said. It warned that ARCA could lose Elementary and Secondary Education Act funding contingent on certifying its compliance with religious liberty obligations by Oct. 1 each year.

Contrary to Reid's designation of Zion's brief evangelism as his "speaking platform," the nature of Social Time suggests it's not "curricular activity" but rather student-led conversation "about any topics of their choice, the letter says. 

Reid tried to suppress Ramos's religious viewpoint, and ARCA officials would be personally liable for violating "clearly established law" – stripped of qualified immunity – if Ramos decided to sue, the firm warned.

He was doing nothing more than following the dictates of his faith, the letter says, quoting from the Great Commission and the Apostle Paul's exhortation to disciples. "As a Christian student, Zion understands these passages as a call to share his faith with his classmates in a kind, winsome way, because he cares deeply about their spiritual well-being."