Liberty Counsel manufactured panic over "Witchy Wednesday" at a Florida high school

A Florida teen's segment during morning announcements became fodder for the Christian outrage machine

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A Florida high school shut down a religious-ish segment that appeared on a student-created morning announcements video, but not without some criticism for the Christian group that demanded it.

Think about the way they did morning announcements when you were in high school. Maybe an administrator delivered them over the loudspeakers. Maybe students were selected to read them instead. At many high schools these days—at least the ones with resources for video production—there are daily or weekly shows created by students and designed to be watched by everyone in the building. Students might propose, film, and edit their own short segments as part of the show, all in an effort to learn how to produce videos—a very useful skill these days!—while still providing a service to their classmates.

That’s what they have at West Orange High School in Winter Garden, a place where “students come together to create daily news for their peers, staff and families,” according to their YouTube page.

On September 9th, the school uploaded the next day’s announcement video and it featured an 82-second segment in which one student talked about “Witchy Wednesday.”

Good morning, witches and warriors… Today is Wednesday, September 10th, and this is our first episode of Witchy Wednesday. I am here to guide you through your magical midweek journey every Wednesday.

To start, there was a New Moon yesterday on September 9th. Normally regarded as a blank state and a new start, this phase invites introspection and intention setting. Simple things to honor this phase could be to write your intentions and bury them, or just meditate for an energy reset and healing.

There is a full moon coming up on September 18th, where the energy is at its highest peak. Creating simple things like moon water and releasing rituals are good ways to cleanse and recharge yourself during this period.

In other news, our first ever witch tip spotlight is a spell for enlightenment that I call “light of insight.” Its purpose is all about inviting clarity, wisdom, and light into your life. You will need a white candle, paper, pen, and incense.

You can burn your incense around your area of practice to clear your surrounding energy for a start. You write your intuition down on your paper, fold it three times. Burn your paper into your white candle. Burn it completely and entirely to have your intention released into the universe.

That itself is your light of insight at work. You then cleanse the space around you once more to finalize your spell.

That’s all for today, warriors. Have a wicked Wednesday.

Was that a religious thing? Even though it wasn’t mentioned in the segment, it was clearly promoting Wiccan beliefs.

If I were her teacher, would I have green-lit and allowed that segment in the broadcast? No. The whole thing feels more like that student’s short passion project for a particular episode than anything the rest of the school needs to see. I’m not sure why it’s worth anyone’s time. It’s unclear if that segment was ever okayed by an adult before it was published or if students just ran with it without oversight. (The school did not respond to my request to clarify that.)

But I’ll be honest: If a student did the same sort of thing promoting Christian rituals, I would say it’s inappropriate. So this segment should not have been in the episode.

Now imagine you work for a professional non-profit organization that gets tipped off about this. There’s a proper way to handle it: You send the district a letter explaining what happened, why it’s a problem, and that you need assurances it won’t happen again. You might want to know if any adults approved this and whether they understand the law. In this case, I would bet good money that none of the administrators saw this in advance (why would they?) and that the student and teacher(s) involved didn’t realize this was a problem. No need to shame them. It’s hardly egregious. It’s something that can be handled quickly and quietly.

Instead, the right-wing Christian group Liberty Counsel went scorched earth on the matter, treating it like it was the Worst Act of Anti-Christian Persecution Ever.

On September 18th, they sent a five-page letter to the district demanding that Christian students get a chance to proselytize on the morning announcements, and that students who want to leave the classroom during those announcements be given the opportunity to do so. Notice that their main request was not for that segment to be removed from future episodes. (They seem to think it’s more valuable to keep the door open for all religions to sneak in than to shut it altogether.)

To be clear, I think Liberty Counsel is right on the legal matter here. But they were blowing the entire thing out of proportion. And the best indication of that is that the group asked the district to respond to their letter within two weeks—by September 30—but before the district could do anything, Liberty Counsel went ahead and sent out a press release (on September 22nd) that practically invited a religious mob to descend upon the school, claiming the district deliberately “Promotes Witchcraft.”

I will just repeat: Just because this segment ran on the show, even though it shouldn’t have, doesn’t meant the district was promoting anything religious.

The whole issue could have been resolved with an email.

On September 23, a lawyer for the district wrote back with a simple, completely appropriate response saying this shouldn’t have happened—and it won’t happen again.

We have reviewed the segment in question and confirmed that it did take place. We have since instructed the school to cease “Witchy Wednesday” segments from the morning announcements. No further segments of this nature will take place.

Great. Problem solved.

The letter then went on to explain why the district was taking this step. The lawyer went over some Supreme Court decisions that essentially backed up the argument that the morning announcements show was an example of government speech and therefore “we cannot constitutionally allow such a segment to continue to take place in the future.” (Again, great. Problem solved.) The letter added that, because there was no longer an “open forum,” students would not have the chance to proselytize during the same show and there was no need for students to “opt out” of watching the show.

The lawyer closed the letter with a blunt message admonishing Liberty Counsel for trying to use this entire incident as a publicity stunt:

Finally, I must express my disappointment with how this matter has been handled. Your letter was sent to me on September 18, 2025, and requested a response by September 30, 2025…

Yet, prior to your requested deadline to respond, your letter was obtained by local media outlets (WESH 2 and The Orlando Sentinel.) I also understand that your organization issued a press release regarding the matter. Furthermore, the front page of lc.org has the following headline “Florida High School Promotes Witchcraft,” along with a link to a copy of your letter.

The manner in which this matter was handled was surprising, given that both our organizations share the same goal to ensure that all students have their First Amendment free exercise rights respected.

That’s putting it lightly. The lawyer was telling the Christian group to calm the fuck down—why didn’t you just call us so we could work this out? It’s one thing to send a legal letter over an issue like this; it’s another to pretend the district is guilty of promoting a non-Christian religion when the inconvenient truth may have been that administrators just didn’t know in advance that a student was going to do this during morning announcements.

Liberty Counsel—failing to take any of that into consideration—then issued another press release patting themselves on the back over the fact that their pressure campaign “Ceases Witchcraft Presentations” at the school. Weirdly, they promoted their own merch at the very end of the release.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, “We commend Orange County Public Schools for taking action to discontinue the ‘Witchy Wednesday’ video segments. Witchcraft and teaching students how to cast occultic spells have no place in government schools.”

Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost.

Liberty Counsel also released an audio interview in which Staver and his co-host made it seem like this was all part of some broader district-wide conspiracy to promote witchcraft.

“It was shocking!” said the co-host. Staver compared the situation to companies that go woke: “Stop pushing the radicalized LGBTQ agenda!” he claimed, before invoking Cracker Barrel (?!) and suggesting “Witchy Wednesday” was the reason so many families were taking advantage of vouchers: “This is exactly why the parents are pulling their kids out of public school!”

Staver insisted in that conversation that the student’s segment “had to go all the way up to the principal of this high school in Orange County. The principal had to be aware of this.” But there’s literally no evidence of that, and there’s no reason to think a principal would micro-manage morning announcements that were likely the responsibility of a video production class. Nor is there any reason to believe this “series” would have continued beyond one episode (despite what the kid said at the beginning of the video) after it aired the first time. Nevertheless, Staver is acting like his intervention prevented an ongoing crisis.

All of this is about one kid’s segment that shouldn’t have aired. It’s completely overblown and a reminder that right-wing Christian groups like this, despite their multi-million-dollar budgets, don’t have any real problems to address because they face no real persecution.

This whole fake controversy isn’t about a school district flirting with witchcraft. It’s about the ugly opportunism of groups like Liberty Counsel. A student made a mistake—one that could have been corrected with a brief email to the school—but the Christian group saw an opportunity to manufacture outrage and twisted it into a full-blown crisis. They wanted headlines that made it seem like the district was promoting witchcraft (it was not) and that everyone is out to get Christians (we are not). The fact that Liberty Counsel raced to the press before the District even had a chance to respond shows they weren’t after a solution; they were after a spectacle.

In any case, District officials handled this exactly as they should have: They acknowledged the mistake, cited the relevant law, ended the inappropriate segment, and reaffirmed their commitment to religious neutrality in public schools. That’s how adults handle this sort of thing. Liberty Counsel’s behavior, on the other hand, underscores just how unserious and dishonest these groups are. They would rather stoke culture war battles and demonize public education by exaggerating small incidents.

They didn’t expose any sinister agenda in the classroom. They just exposed the bad faith and desperation of an organization that needs outrage more than truth.

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