Kansas sixth graders told they can't list Trump, Charlie Kirk as heroes, complaint says

Michael Stavola, The Wichita Eagle on Jan 16, 2026

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WICHITA, Kan. — A Kansas elementary school guidance counselor kept sixth graders from listing Charlie Kirk and President Donald Trump as their role models during a class assignment, according to a complaint sent this week to federal officials by a conservative legal organization.

And, the seven-page complaint says, after at least one parent brought concerns about the censorship to the Marshall Elementary School administration in Eureka, the principal told students that future concerns should be brought to that teacher or the principal, “not to their parents.”

In an email, Eureka USD 389 Superintendent Scott Hoyt said: “We are aware of this incident and are always working with families and our school staff to make sure every learning activity is a positive and encouraging experience for every student.” He said they could not comment on individuals involved since it violates their policy and privacy laws.

The complaint was sent via email and FedEx to the U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Justice by the American Center for Law and Justice on Tuesday.

The ACLJ complaint calls the Oct. 28, 2025, incident and what followed a “straightforward violation of clearly established constitutional rights.”

The organization is asking the federal agencies to investigate and “issue formal findings establishing” that the school took part in “religious discrimination by prohibiting students from identifying religious figures as role models while permitting secular figures; engaged in political viewpoint discrimination by censoring conservative political speech while permitting other political expression; and violated fundamental parental rights protected by the Fourteenth Amendment through multiple means including instructing students not to tell their parents about concerns.”

The complaint is on behalf of a mother and her daughter. It says the woman, who had three children at the school, “has been forced to withdraw her children rather than continue to subject them to these practices.”

The ACLJ also has a petition about the incident, saying the “radical Left is waging a pervasive war on freedom” and asking for signatures to “defend free speech and protect religious liberty.” It had over 23,000 signatures Thursday afternoon with a goal of 50,000.

What the complaint alleges happened:

A student was writing the names of other students' role models on the board when one student said theirs was Kirk, a conservative political activist who was assassinated in 2025 during a talk at Utah Valley University.

The teacher became “very uncomfortable” and yelled out that Kirk was ‘not a hero,”’ the complaint says. The teacher then ordered the part of his name already written to be erased.

Then, another student mentioned Trump as a role model.

The teacher “reiterated her prohibition even more angrily, stating that students could not write political or religious figures on the board, and in fact excluded political and religious topics altogether.”

But, the complaint says, she allowed the names of other “controversial figures,” including football players involved in political activism, to be written on the board.

“No restriction was placed on potentially controversial secular figures,” the complaint says.

It says the mother and another parent later met with the teacher and principal, who reportedly said the teacher did nothing wrong. The teacher also said she banned those names to protect those kids from having other students “fire back” at them for their picks, the complaint says.

The teacher later issued the class an apology “from prepared notes and was crying, but the message failed to acknowledge the viewpoint discrimination or restore students’ confidence that their voices would be respected.”

The principal said her comments to students about bringing their concerns to staff and not parents was taken out of context, according to the complaint.

It also says the concerns were brought to the district school board at its Dec. 8 meeting, but “no corrective action has been announced, and the violations continue to remain unaddressed.”

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