The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear a free-speech challenge by a former high school student to an Indiana public school district’s policy that barred her from posting a flyer with an anti-abortion slogan on school walls. The justices rejected the former student’s appeal of a lower court ruling that the Noblesville Schools district’s policy did not violate the First Amendment protections against government interference with freedom of speech in the U.S. Constitution.
In court papers, the former student who has graduated is identified as “E.D.,” because she was a minor when her parents, Michael and Lisa Duell, filed the 2021 lawsuit against the school district outside Indianapolis.
The dispute was sparked by an anti-abortion student group called Noblesville Students for Life, a local chapter of Students for Life of America, that E.D. formed when she was a freshman at Noblesville High School.
The school approved the group’s formation and allowed the girl to advertise it at an activities fair, where she set up a table-top poster with the group’s mission statement and a sign that read, “I am the pro-life generation.”
She had a shirt with the same slogan on it.
But the school prevented her from hanging on school walls flyers that included photographs of students in front of the Supreme Court building in Washington carrying signs that read, “I Reject Abortion,” “Defund Planned Parenthood,” “I Am the Pro-Life Generation,” and other similar messages.
The school has said its policy “categorically prohibited political content in flyers posted on its walls.”
According to court papers, a school official told the girl that student group flyers that go on school walls should only have the name of the club and the location, time and date of its meeting — no photos of signage.
According to court papers filed by the school, the girl and her mother then went to another school administrator to ask permission for the same flyer.
The mother’s involvement raised concerns among school officials that the group was not truly student-led, court papers from the school said, resulting in the suspension of the club for the rest of the semester.
The former student went on to file a lawsuit after being denied her proposed flyers and having her club revoked.
In court papers, she said an administrator expressed concern about the flyers’ political nature, especially the “Defund Planned Parenthood” signage.
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