If angels are real, they walk among us through the good, caring, dedicated teachers of the world. Truly, if the job is done with genuine passion, it is a vocation that can dramatically change the lives of students for the better. I’m not a teacher, but as a mother with a child in elementary school, I can say without a doubt what is essential for that to happen is to create an environment where all children feel seen, respected, and heard. That’s a hard thing to accomplish in the extremely divisive world we live in.
One would think that establishing that a classroom is inclusive and fights for the interests of every single student in the room wouldn’t be an overtly political message, but in 2026, that is exactly where we are in the so-called land of the free. Law & Crime reported that after a year-long battle, Idaho teacher Sarah Inama is suing her former school district for banning her inclusive classroom posters.
According to Idaho Ed News, Inama was approached on February 3, 2025, by Monty Hyde, principal at Lewis & Clark Middle School in the West Ada district, about some posters hanging in her room. One read, “Everyone is welcome here” and featured hands in multicolored skin tones with a red heart in each palm. The other read, “In this room everyone is: welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued, equal.” The school official told her the posters expressly violated the district policy on “content neutrality.”
“Not everyone agrees that ‘everyone is welcome,’ so it is a political opinion,” claimed West Ada School District administrators, according to a federal complaint Inama filed in the District of Idaho. “The color of the hands is crossing the political boundary,” the administrators allegedly told her.
Reportedly, not a single student, parent, or guardian complained about the posters in question.
In shock, Inama originally complied and took them down but was immediately emotional when her kids of all races began filing into her room. After a contemplative weekend, she decided to hang them back up.
School officials determined that Inama’s poster violated HB 41 after Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador concluded that a “poster” qualifies as a “banner” under the law, according to her complaint. He initially made that determination and reaffirmed it in a June 2025 opinion submitted to the state’s Department of Education.
In an op-ed for Fox News in July 2025, Labrador said, “The rainbow colors and progressive symbols accompanying these messages make their political purpose unmistakable” and they “reflect a broader ecosystem of political resistance groups launched in protest of the political rise of President Donald Trump,” Law & Crime reported.
Labrador added, “These seemingly neutral terms mask a comprehensive worldview that undermines parental authority over children’s moral development.”
Inama fought back, ultimately calling the policy bigoted and racist. She was unable to convince school officials, so she alerted the media and resigned from her position as the award-winning history teacher she was well-known to be. Now that she is at a different Idaho school, she isn’t backing down, and she’s prepared to take them to court.
“Ms. Inama now brings this lawsuit seeking declaratory and injunctive relief that the Speech Law [HB 41] is unconstitutionally vague and overbroad in violation of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution as incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment, is violative of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, both facially and as applied, and is a violation of the Constitution of the State of Idaho,” the complaint states.
I truly hope common sense prevails here. Otherwise, we really do live in an America I don’t recognize.
