The Center filed an amicus brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in E.D. v. Noblesville School District, urging the Court to grant the cert. petition of a high school student who was forced to remove her club’s flyers from school walls.
E.D. founded a pro-life group at Noblesville High School. She created flyers for the group’s first meeting to post on walls on the same basis as other clubs’ flyers. Her flyers featured images of young people in front of the U.S. Supreme Court holding common pro-life slogans, including “Defund Planned Parenthood” and “I am the Pro-Life Generation” and included a line explicitly stating it was her group—and not the school—that was organizing the meeting. School administrators told E.D. to change her flyers and remove the images, alleging that the school had an unwritten policy against “political messages,” which it claimed the flyers violated. When E.D. did not, the principal ended up suspending the group’s status. E.D. sued, but both the district court and the Seventh Circuit found for the school district.
The Center’s brief asks the Court to clarify that Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier, 484 U.S. 260 (1988), should not be expanded to justify school districts seeking to broadly control the content of student flyers that should be seen as part of a limited public forum, but rather should be confined to student expression that is legitimately considered part of the school’s curriculum. This would prevent results-oriented decision-making that undercuts free speech. The Center argues that the correct standard should instead be that of Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969), which protects symbolic speech, and that such speech, including photos on flyers, is protected unless it is reasonably forecasted to cause material and substantial disruption of the school or invade the rights of others.
