Is It Fair to Ban a Pro-Life Student Group for Being Too “Political”

​There are tens of thousands of after-hours student groups in high schools across the country – from those celebrating film, music, chess, or drama to those of a more political or religious nature. At Noblesville High School in Indiana, for example, you could join the Young Democrats, the Young Republicans, the Fellowship for Christian Athletes, or the Gender and Sexuality Alliance. The one group students can no longer join is the Noblesville Students for Life (NSFL).
 
In August 2021 a freshman at Noblesville received initial approval to start a Students for Life chapter, which attracted 30 student sign-ups at the school’s fall activities fair. The following month, the student organizer prepared a poster advertising a club meeting, which featured a photograph of students outside the U.S. Supreme Court holding up life-affirming protest signs.
 
Then Noblesville’s principal “derecognized” the group, calling the poster “inappropriate” and too “political.” Noblesville, apparently, has a policy allowing administrators broad authority to issue prior restraints on student speech, barring “anything political in nature” as well as specific “political stance[s].” What constitutes “political” is entirely undefined and left up the whims of the individual administrator.
 
In December 2021, in coordination with Charitable Allies, the group’s student organizer brought suit against the school district, alleging First Amendment retaliation. The suit also claimed violations of the Equal Access Act, which prohibits discrimination against the political content of student groups meeting outside of class.
 
School administrators have every right to prevent students from engaging in disruptive conduct, but students have every right to express their First Amendment-protected viewpoints after hours.
 
Schools are limited public fora, which may issue viewpoint-neutral restrictions on groups. What they should not do is bar targeted political speech and then make ad hoc, biased determinations of what is unacceptable on a case-by-case basis. How the school found NSFL overly political when the Young Democrats and Young Republicans are permitted to meet and advertise their meetings is unfathomable. 
 
The administrators, of course, now claim they derecognized the club because of the student’s behavior, an argument contradicted by the evidence and the many contextual clues pointed out by the plaintiffs. It seems pretty clear that the principal simply doesn’t want the pro-life viewpoint represented at Noblesville High.
 
Ultimately, a District Court bought the school’s argument. Now the student is appealing to the Seventh Circuit, and this case is receiving legal backing from the Alliance Defending Freedom.
 
We hope that the court will recognize that rules must be neutral and that students don’t relinquish their First Amendment rights at the schoolhouse door – no matter how much some administrators might wish it were so.