Pro-Life Students Fight for Their Free Speech Rights at Supreme Court

Pro-life high school students are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to protect their First Amendment rights after an Indiana school district censored their flyers and revoked their club’s recognition, according to a petition filed Jan. 28.

The case, E.D. v. Noblesville School District, centers on E.D., a freshman at Noblesville High School who founded Noblesville Students for Life in 2021. The student-led, noncurricular group — affiliated with Students for Life of America — initially gained approval from the principal as one of more than 70 such clubs at the school.

When E.D. sought to post flyers promoting the club’s first meeting, featuring an image of pro-life advocates holding signs that read “Defund Planned Parenthood,” school officials rejected them as too “political.”

The principal later revoked the club’s recognition entirely.

Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys, representing E.D., her family and the club, argue the actions amounted to viewpoint discrimination. Other groups, including Young Democrats and the Gender and Sexuality Alliance, were allowed to post similar promotional flyers without restriction, they contend.

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“Students don’t lose their constitutionally protected freedom of speech when they walk into a school building,” said ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of Appellate Advocacy John Bursch. “A school can’t tell a high-school student or student organization that they can’t publicly express pro-life messages that are important to them.”

Bursch added: “While other student groups at the school were free to express their messages, the school censored this club’s flyers and then revoked the club’s recognition because the messages on the flyers were too overtly pro-life.”

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld the district’s actions in 2025, reasoning that someone might mistakenly believe the student-club flyers were endorsed by the school.

ADF’s petition seeks Supreme Court review to provide clarity on student speech protections, especially as public schools increasingly engage in political advocacy.

“The need for clarity is especially acute as public schools and educators increasingly engage in political advocacy and indoctrination, heightening the risk that students who dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy will be censored,” the petition states.

Students for Life of America supported the filing, highlighting what it called typical roadblocks for pro-life student groups.

“This Indiana case represents a typical abuse of students’ free-speech rights,” said SFLA President Kristan Hawkins. “Administrators will throw up roadblocks for pro-life clubs because they don’t want pro-life speech in schools, fearing that some may find it controversial.”

Hawkins added: “Our petition will focus on an attempted ban on ‘political’ speech. Free speech rights you can’t use don’t exist. We are not going to forget about our students’ rights or ignore attempts to silence them, no matter how long it takes.”

The petition emphasizes that E.D. only sought to post flyers — as other club leaders could — to promote an extracurricular meeting she organized. It argues her free-speech rights should not vary by federal circuit and calls for national uniformity on the issue.

The Supreme Court has not yet decided whether to hear the case.

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