School District Receives Letter From Legal Group Over Parking Space Dispute
A high school senior’s quiet request to express her Christian faith has ignited a new front in the battle over free speech and religious liberty in public schools. This week, Sophia Shumaker, a student at Rampart High School in Colorado Springs, alleged that her First Amendment rights were violated when the school rejected her proposed parking space design—one that included Christian imagery and a Bible verse.
Backed by the legal advocacy group First Liberty Institute, Shumaker filed a formal complaint against both Rampart High and its parent district, Academy School District 20. At the heart of the issue is whether the school’s parking lot—a space students are allowed to customize with personal artwork for their senior year—constitutes a public forum for private expression.
“The guidelines prohibit messages that the district deems, ‘offensive, negative, rude, gang-related, political, religious, or trademarked images,’” the school policy states. It’s that line—specifically the blanket restriction on religious content—that now finds itself under constitutional scrutiny.
Shumaker initially sought to paint her space with a peaceful pastoral image: a shepherd, a staff, a sheep, and a Bible verse. Her proposal was denied outright by a faculty member managing the parking project. She then attempted a more modest design, asking to include just the abbreviated reference “1 Cor 13:4”—a verse from 1 Corinthians describing the nature of love—but was again discouraged.
According to First Liberty, the rejection amounts to viewpoint discrimination. The complaint notes that other schools in the same district have allowed religious references in similar senior parking projects. This inconsistency, the legal group argues, undercuts the idea that the parking space messages are “government speech,” which could be regulated. Rather, they are clearly private expression protected under the First Amendment.
“Once a school opens a space for student expression,” First Liberty states, “it cannot pick and choose which viewpoints are acceptable, especially based on religion.” The letter contends that the school has created a limited public forum, a legal designation where private speech is protected unless it causes substantial disruption or infringes on the rights of others.
That threshold hasn’t been met, the group says. A Bible verse or a shepherd's staff hardly qualifies as disruptive, let alone dangerous.
Academy School District 20, in response, released a brief statement confirming that it is “reviewing the information provided.” While the district claimed it had not received direct communication from Shumaker or her family before October 22, it acknowledged that the senior parking program is a school-sponsored activity subject to guidelines and an approval process.
That last point could prove pivotal. If the court views the parking spaces as an extension of school-sponsored speech, then administrators have more leeway to regulate content. But if the spaces are deemed a limited forum for student expression—as First Liberty insists—the school’s ability to prohibit religious viewpoints narrows considerably.
Legal precedents back the student's position. In Tinker v. Des Moines (1969), the Supreme Court famously ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.” More recently, in Good News Club v. Milford Central School (2001), the Court held that religious speech must be treated on equal footing with secular speech in limited public forums.
Ultimately, the case could hinge on whether Rampart High's parking space project represents genuine student expression or school-endorsed messaging. For Shumaker, it’s a matter of principle.