Former West Ada teacher sues after ‘Everyone is Welcome Here’ sign controversy
Former West Ada teacher Sarah Inama has sued the school district and the state after school administrators last year told her to remove a sign in her classroom reading “Everyone is Welcome Here” — a mandate she defied and which led to nationwide media coverage and controversy.
In the lawsuit, attorneys for Inama said a law the Idaho Legislature passed last year restricting what banners and flags teachers could hang in their classrooms was “unconstitutionally vague and overbroad” and violated the First Amendment.
The suit specifically names the district, West Ada Superintendent Derek Bub, the Idaho State Department of Education and Attorney General Raúl Labrador. Inama seeks a declaration that the law violates the U.S. and Idaho constitutions and is “void and unenforceable,” along with damages and attorney fees.
Inama no longer works for the West Ada School District. She took a job at the Boise School District, but the lawsuit said she has standing to sue because she “remains in jeopardy” that the law will be enforced, which infringes on her constitutional rights.
“Because the Speech Law places obligations on schools where Ms. Inama works to curtail disfavored speech, it is predictable that Ms. Inama’s speech will be regulated and/or that her protected speech will be chilled by self-regulation,” the lawsuit said. “Ms. Inama’s First Amendment rights are and were infringed … and will continue to be threatened absent relief from this Court.”
West Ada said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. The Idaho State Department of Education said it wouldn’t be commenting because it is an active case.
KTVB first reported the lawsuit.
Law creates chilling effect, suit argues
In the lawsuit, attorneys for Inama said the issues with her “Everyone is Welcome Here” posters arose after state legislators proposed a bill during last year’s session that would limit what teachers can display in their classrooms.
At that point, it had been years since Inama started hanging the signs in her classroom.
Inama purchased two signs in 2021, the lawsuit said. One read, “In this room everyone is welcome, important, accepted, respected, encouraged, valued, equal” and the other said “Everyone is Welcome Here” and included illustrated hands with different skin tones.
She hung them in her classroom at Lewis and Clark Middle School in Meridian. No one complained, the lawsuit said. In 2022, the West Ada school board adopted a policy adding restrictions on what teachers could put up in their classrooms. The policy said school property shouldn’t be used for advancing individual beliefs and called for classrooms to be “content neutral” and distraction-free.
Last year, the Legislature proposed — and later passed — a similar policy. That bill bars staff from displaying flags or banners in public schools that “promote political, religious, or ideological viewpoints,” including race, gender, sexual orientation and political ideologies. Lawmakers put the Department of Education in charge of overseeing the policy’s enforcement.
According to the lawsuit, district administrators asked Inama to remove the posters in January last year after that bill was introduced, saying at the time it violated the district’s “content neutral” policy. Administrators told Inama that “not everyone agrees that ‘Everyone is Welcome’ ” and that the poster represented a political opinion, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit argued that West Ada “preemptively” ordered Inama to remove the posters after the bill was introduced, even though it had not yet been signed into law.
Initially, when Inama was told to remove the signs, she did. At the time, the lawsuit said, a few students asked her why she took them down. She couldn’t explain why the posters violated the district’s policy. She asked her school principal for clarity, but didn’t receive it. So she changed course.
“Ms. Inama suffered emotional distress for days after complying with the directive to remove the Posters, feeling that she was being ordered to condone, and was complicit in, racist sentiments,” the lawsuit said.
So she put them back up, and then had a meeting with administrators who told her that the hands with different skin tones were “crossing the political boundary” and that “political environments change,” the lawsuit said. The district later said it wasn’t the “Everyone is Welcome Here” message itself, but the graphics on the poster.
The controversy was widely covered by the media and people across the Treasure Valley made “Everyone is Welcome Here” T-shirts, sent emails to the district, spoke before the school board and rallied around Inama.
In March, Gov. Brad Little signed the law limiting what could be displayed in public schools.
The lawsuit claimed administrators and Labrador “spoke out against her, claimed she was insubordinate, a political operative, and subjected her to public ridicule and multiple interviews with superiors — including pulling her out of class in front of her concerned students.”
Labrador’s office issued an opinion that was publicly released in June that said the “Everyone is Welcome Here” poster would violate the law, saying it was part of an “ideological/social movement” that launched in Minnesota after President Donald Trump’s first election and had been used by the Democratic Party, Idaho Education News reported. The opinion from the attorney general linked to a news article about signs that read “all are welcome here” that a parent created after racist graffiti was drawn on a school in her hometown. The opinion claims Inama first hung her signs in 2017, “during the height” of the movement in Minnesota, but Inama did not start teaching until 2019.
The lawsuit argued that law has been applied inconsistently. The Boise School District, for example, said it would support teachers who displayed the posters.
The law restricting what teachers can hang in their classrooms is vague and overbroad, which creates an “unconstitutional chilling effect” where staff members have to “guess at what conduct or utterances may impact their teaching position,” the lawsuit said. Inama is “legally obligated to welcome students of all races and ethnicities into her classroom,” the lawsuit said.
At the end of last school year, Inama resigned from the West Ada School District and took a job with the Boise School District, saying she couldn’t “be complicit with the exclusionary views and decisions of the administration.”
She hung the posters in her new classroom, where they remain, the lawsuit said.
