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A Christian high school student from Arkansas says his First Amendment rights were violated after he was silenced by school officials for speaking about his faith with his classmates.
Zion Ramos is now demanding that he not only be given an opportunity to share the Gospel with his classmates, but that school officials complete religious liberty training to ensure that students have the opportunity to discuss their faith in the future.
First Liberty, a non-profit legal group, has sent a demand letter to Arkansas Connections Academy (ARCA) on behalf of the 11th-grade student.
In late September, Ramos, who attends the online academy, felt led to share about his faith after watching the memorial service for conservative influencer Charlie Kirk.
The student attempted to use the opportunity to share with his classmates during their designated “Social Time”—a half-hour daily Zoom call that allows students to talk with each other about whatever they want, as long as it’s not violent, vulgar, or obscene.
“Just as students would chat at lunchtime, in the hallway, or on the soccer field of a traditional school, ARCA students share about a wide variety of topics, ranging from current events, hairstyles, pets, relationships, and LGBTQ-related conversation,” First Liberty explained in their letter.
The conversations are monitored by a variety of the school’s staff, but teachers “rarely, if ever, intervene or mute students’ conversations.”
However, that was not the case for Ramos.
During his two-minute statement, Ramos began by saying, “Hello, my name is Zion. I won’t be long, but I have something very important to say. You may not want to hear it, but it’s the most important thing you will ever hear.”
“We don’t know how long we have. One day, it’ll all be over. It may not be today, tomorrow, a month, or even years from now, but when our time is up, all we will have is eternity. And we only have two places to go; heaven or hell. And we need to decide where we want to spend it,” he said.
At that point, the teacher monitoring the social time, Ms. Kelsey Reid, muted Ramos without any warning or explanation.
The student unmuted himself and tried to explain that he had a right to speak, “because he was not hindering the educational process as this was a non-educational session, and he attempted to finish,” First Liberty explains.
“We need to decide how we will spend eternity. We can accept the Lord Jesus Christ into our hearts…,” he said before being cut off again, mid-sentence.
Reid then removed him from the Zoom meeting. About one minute later, she shut down the entire Zoom meeting.
The high school teacher then sent a message to Zion explaining her actions.
“I would like to explain why you were removed from Social Time today. I did not remove you based on the information you were sharing, but rather due to the manner in which you were sharing it. We have a short amount of time for students to engage with one another and, unfortunately, that does not allow for all students to use Social Time as a speaking platform,” she said.
Reid then suggested he use the student chat section to share his beliefs, but First Liberty points out that “most students do not read the chat, which is hard to follow with 100+ students on the call.”
“Zion spoke for less than two minutes in a calm, peaceful, conversational tone before Ms. Reid shut him down. Other students commonly share about secular topics for significantly longer without being muted or censored,” First Liberty asserts.
The legal group contends that ARCA violated the student’s First Amendment rights when Reid censored his religious speech and prevented him from sharing his faith.
“School officials cannot silence students who are sharing their faith with other students during social gatherings,” said Kayla Toney, Counsel for First Liberty Institute. “Public schools are not religion-free zones, but by censoring faith on campus, officials unjustly marginalize students like Zion who simply want to share the Gospel with peers.”
Ramos is standing up for his First Amendment freedoms and is demanding that the school give him three minutes to speak about his faith during a future “Social Time.”
The legal group is also requesting that officials complete religious liberty training and ensure that they will not violate or censor the free speech or free exercise of students.
“[We want]to ensure that neither Zion, nor any other Arkansas Connections Academy students of any faith background receive similar treatment in the future,” the legal group outlined in the letter.
ARCA has until October 10th to respond to the letter or could potentially face other “legal remedies.”
CBN News has reached out to Arkansas Community Academy for comment, but did not receive an immediate response.
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