The Freedom From Religion Foundation is calling on the University of Oklahoma at Norman to immediately reinstate a graduate teaching assistant placed on administrative leave after being falsely accused of religious discrimination.

FFRF, a national state/church watchdog, has sent a formal letter to University President Joseph Harroz expressing deep concern over the institution’s response to a baseless allegation of religious discrimination made by a junior, who received a failing grade for turning in what amounted to a religious sermon instead of the required academic reflection paper.

The TA had correctly awarded the student zero points for the psychology assignment, in which the student described transgender people as “demonic” and asserted that gender roles are “biblically ordained.”

“The student was not persecuted for her faith. She was penalized for not properly completing the assignment,” says FFRF Legal Counsel Chris Line. “Academic standards aren’t anti-Christian.”

The assignment required students to discuss “how people are perceived based on societal expectations of gender” after reading an article about the topic. Instead, Samantha Fulnecky wrote an essay based purely on her own personal religious beliefs.

Fulnecky’s essay devolves into a full-on Christian sermon: “Overall, reading articles such as this one encourage me to one day raise my children knowing that they have a Heavenly Father who loves them and cherishes them deeply and that having their identity firmly rooted in who He is will give them the satisfaction and acceptance that the world can never provide for them. My prayer for the world and specifically for American society and youth is that they would not believe the lies being spread from Satan that make them believe they are better off as another gender than what God made them. I pray that they feel God’s love and acceptance as who He originally created them to be.”

The assignment required students to demonstrate that they had read the article, grappled with its content and offered a critical response grounded in empirical reasoning — the basic expectations of any university-level psychology course. Both the graduate instructor and the course’s supervising professor independently explained that the paper did not meet basic standards of clear academic writing. Despite this, the university placed the TA on leave after Fulnecky claimed she was graded unfairly because of her religious beliefs — an accusation directly contradicted by the written feedback she received from the instructor.

As FFRF’s letter explains, the University of Oklahoma, as a public institution, may not privilege religious viewpoints. The First Amendment protects a student’s right to hold personal beliefs, but it does not exempt students from academic expectations or entitle them to replace scholarly analysis with sectarian declarations.

“This response from the university sends a chilling message: that academic standards may be suspended when a student invokes personal religious belief, and that instructors may face punishment for applying those standards even-handedly when it results in a bad grade for a religious person,” the letter states. Such a precedent would mean any student could claim discrimination whenever they receive a low grade for failing to follow instructions, so long as they mention religion. This result would undermine the very purpose of higher education.

The instructor in question, graduate teaching assistant Mel Curth, has already faced online harassment and attacks from political activists. FFRF warns that the university’s decision to remove the TA from the classroom not only harms their professional standing but also emboldens those seeking to weaponize false religious discrimination claims to undermine educators.

FFRF urges the University of Oklahoma to reinstate the graduate instructor without delay, acknowledging that the instructor acted appropriately and professionally, affirm publicly that academic standards will not be overridden by religious or political pressure and clarify to students, faculty and the public that religious belief does not exempt anyone from meeting course requirements. “Classrooms must remain places of genuine learning, not arenas for political gamesmanship or religious privilege,” Line concludes the letter.

The escalation surrounding this incident has been amplified by the student’s mother, Kristi Fulnecky, who has framed her daughter’s failing grade as part of a religious struggle. In media interviews, she has said that she is “confident God is using Samantha for a purpose,” adding that “God’s protecting us” and that her daughter was “meant to stand for” this moment. Kristi Fulnecky was elected to the Springfield City Council in 2015, where she unsuccessfully pushed to display the motto “In God We Trust” in the council chambers. As an attorney, she has represented clients charged in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection and has described her legal work as grounded in her Christian convictions.

FFRF will continue to monitor this situation and stands ready to support faculty and students facing inappropriate religious pressure or unconstitutional favoritism at public institutions.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with over 41,000 members nationwide, including hundreds of members in Oklahoma. FFRF’s purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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