Updated April 10, 2025 at 13:26 PM ET
For years, Sarah Inama had a poster hanging in her Idaho classroom that encouraged her sixth-grade students to be kind and inclusive with one another.
"Everyone is welcome here," it said in bright, multicolored letters atop a row of hands with varying skin tones.
The poster had never drawn any attention, until recently, when her principal and vice principal asked her to take it down.
"They told me teachers aren't allowed to have posters that show their personal or political opinions on things and this was now seen as a personal opinion," said Inama.
The poster came down, but not for long.
After a few days of losing sleep over it, Inama put it back up, a move she says the principal considered insubordination. Dissatisfied with the explanation from school administrators, Inama pressed the district's chief academic officer for answers.
"He told me that political environments ebb and flow and what might not have been controversial three or six or nine months ago can be considered controversial now."
The school had made the decision without a single parent complaining.
West Ada School District confirmed Inama's account.
In a statement to NPR, a district spokeswoman said it wasn't the words on the poster that were the issue, but the different colored letters and varying skin tones of the hands that they "determine to potentially express viewpoints regarding specific identity groups."
Inama still teaches her world civilization class, and the poster she was ordered to take down last month is still hanging in her classroom, but she feels demoralized by the incident.
"There are only two opinions of that poster: You either believe that everyone is welcome here or you don't," she said.
Soon after President Trump returned to office, he signed an executive order titled "Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling," which seeks to restrict how schools discuss race, gender and "equity ideology" in the classroom. The order grants the Education Department the power to rescind federal funds from schools that violate the directive. To help enforce the new rules, the Education Department also launched an End DEI portal, where students or parents can report on teachers for diversity, equity and inclusivity lessons taught in class. All of it is raising questions about who has the right to exercise free speech in public education—
The effort to root out DEI lessons is a victory for groups like Moms for Liberty, which is described by supporters as a parental rights organization. It endorsed the creation of the portal as many public school teachers say they're being closely watched and ultimately silenced.
"What did I say in class today?"
Talking about current events in class is a walk through a minefield for E., a social studies teacher in Oregon. She asked to be identified only by her first initial because she fears students or parents could report her for speaking against the campaign to root out DEI.
She looked up the portal page after hearing about its launch on the news. Immediately, her mind started racing. "I kept thinking, 'Oh my gosh, what did I say in class today? What was asked in class today? What could be taken out of context in class today?'" she said. "I was pretty scared."
From that point on, E. has been extremely cautious about how she answers students' questions about how the history she's teaching relates to what's happening today.
"There are so many times where I just have to tell them I can't answer that question or I just change the subject, or I think about how I'm going to say it in a way that gives them the information they need, but also in a way that's going to cover my butt," she said.
Tune in to NPR and visit NPR.org every day this week for in-depth stories on "The State of the First Amendment: The Right From Which All Other Rights Flow."
The administration's mission to stamp out DEI from public school education has teachers like E. worried that their ability to speak — and teach — is being stifled.
"It's becoming easier and easier for certain people to have the right to free speech and for others to be having theirs shut down." E said. "I think it's just been a big shift as to what's acceptable speech and what is now considered a DEI report issue."
The Education Department has not responded to NPR's repeated requests for more information on how the reporting and penalty process would work for teachers when complaints are filed. The portal page states that the department vows to protect "the confidentiality of these submissions to the fullest extent permitted by law."
Some are celebrating the White House's DEI purge
For Tina Descovich, co-founder of the Florida-based Moms for Liberty group, the End DEI portal is serving a need that had been ignored for far too long.
With the portal now in place, she says people have flagged lessons where teachers "divide children by race and call Black children the victims or the oppressed, white children are the oppressors," adding that "we can study history and the atrocities that have happened in American history, but to divide children today in 2025 by race is unacceptable."
NPR couldn't find examples of lessons in public schools where students were physically divided and labeled like Descovich described. When asked for examples, Moms for Liberty pointed to a case in 2021 involving a Florida public arts high school that planned separate student meetings for students of color and white students. It later canceled them and apologized.
Getting rid of DEI is not the only issue driving Moms for Liberty. The group has pushed for banning books on racism, discrimination, sexuality or LGBTQ+ rights. Some of its members post anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, and at one chapter meeting in Arkansas a few years ago, a member was recorded talking about gunning down a school librarian.
The group was founded at the height of the pandemic, when many parents rallied against mask mandates and school closures and shouted down members of school board meetings.
The Southern Poverty Law Center labeled the group extremist in 2023 after the National School Board Association asked the Biden administration to intervene as threats against school staff and school board members spiked. The Justice Department promised to investigate and prosecute anyone intimidating or threatening violence.
Moms for Liberty frames the FBI's investigation of violent threats against school board members as a politically motivated campaign to silence parents and their organization.
"Parents were just showing up trying to voice their opinion," says Descovich. "We are not anti-government, but we absolutely have the right, guaranteed in the First Amendment, to address government officials when we think they are not on the right track. And it's really been incredible to watch the forces unify against us."
In just a few years a lot has changed.
With Trump back in office, the doors to the White House are now open to Moms for Liberty.
Representatives of the far-right group were at the signing of executive orders on dismantling the Department of Education and banning transgender athletes from women's and girls' sports, suggesting Moms for Liberty not only feels freer to speak these days — it has the president's ear.
"A lot of these executive orders speak to the struggle that our organization and many other organizations have experienced over the last four and five years," says Descovich, who believes that if others now suddenly feel "silenced in the way we were silenced the last several years," they should organize.
"It may take time, but it does work. I am willing to stand with someone, anyone for their right to speak."
In the meantime, policies her group has advocated for, like the End DEI portal, are chilling speech for teachers in public schools.
Copyright 2025 NPR
