North Carolina School Hits “Rock Bottom” After Censoring Student

Gabby Stout is a student at Ardrey Kell High School. Two days after Charlie Kirk was murdered on September 10, 2025, she received permission to paint a message that commemorated his life on the school’s spirit rock. The message she painted read “Freedom 1776” and “Live Like Kirk –John 11:25.”

However, two days later, on September 14, Ardrey Kell Principal Susan Nichols released a statement describing the display as “vandalism” that violated the student code of conduct. She also stated that a police investigation was in progress.

Even though she had previously been granted permission to paint the rock, Stout did the right thing and came forward to say she was the one who painted the message. That’s when things took a turn not only for the worse, but towards the weird.

She was removed from class, instructed to issue a statement admitting her wrongdoing, and required to turn over her personal cell phone for the school to review her call history.

OK, why would the school want to review her personal call history? Who she calls and who calls her have nothing to do with painting a message on the school’s spirit rock. It is a clear violation of her rights, through intimidation and major overstepping of the school’s legal boundaries.

The following day, the school restated that messages on the rock should be “inclusive” and in “good taste,” with “positive school spirit.”

Then, a month later, in October, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools publicly walked that message back, saying the student had not vandalized the rock and that there had never been a criminal investigation.

On December 8^, 2025, after weeks of being ignored by school officials regarding going on record to set things straight, a lawsuit was filed in the Western District of North Carolina. Stout and her parents were represented by the Alliance for Defending Freedom, which filed a federal complaint alleging that her constitutional rights were violated under the First, Fourth, Fifth, and Fourteenth Amendments.

ADF Senior Counsel Travis Barham stated:

“Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools should be ashamed of how it treated Gabby. She did everything right, and they did everything wrong. She got permission, and she painted an uplifting message of faith. They censored her speech, publicly denounced her, and then punished her for expressing her views.”

“In this country, no student should ever be threatened, investigated, or publicly smeared for expressing her faith. Schools cannot pick and choose which viewpoints can be expressed on campus, and this settlement makes that crystal clear.”

The settlement that Barham spoke of, according to Fox News, is that the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education has agreed to pay Ardrey Kell High School student Gabby Stout $95,000 for her legal expenses, issue a statement regretting how she was treated, and usher in a new free speech policy.

Stout discussed her experience, stating, “I hope they understand that students do not abandon their faith or their rights to free speech when they enter school.”

“I didn’t do anything wrong, as they now admit. I was sharing a message I believe in, a message that inspired me, and a message that honored Charlie Kirk by pointing people to the hope for salvation through Jesus Christ. And they made me feel like a criminal for doing this.”

This is the same school district that allowed a radical Black Lives Matter message to be painted on the rock amidst riots and violence in 2020. Students were allowed to write “No Justice No Peace” and “I Can’t Breathe,” and the rock was even repainted when someone painted over it to mask the statements.

The struggle was not in vain. On June 9th, the school district changed its free speech policy to include new guidelines on spirit rock painting and student expression.

Board of Education Vice Chair Gregory “Dee” Rankin, who also chairs the board’s policy committee, released this statement:

“The policy committee along with our legal department, is confident we have a policy that provides clarity and guidance for each of our school leaders that allows students to exercise their First Amendment rights while minimizing incidents that could cause disruption.”

The school district brought this on themselves, and in my opinion, the $95,000 price tag is far too small for the way they bungled this entire episode and the embarrassment and humiliation it caused Gabby.

Fortunately, the school district literally found itself between a “Rock and a Hard Place” and ended up suffering embarrassment of its own.