By John Kruzel
WASHINGTON, June 15 (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear a former high school student’s free-speech challenge to an Indiana public school district’s policy that barred her from displaying a flyer with an anti-abortion message on school walls.
The justices turned away the former student’s appeal of a lower court’s decision that the Noblesville Schools district’s policy did not violate the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment protections against government abridgment of freedom of speech.
The former student, who has since graduated, is known in court papers as “E.D.” due to her status as a minor when her parents Michael and Lisa Duell filed the 2021 lawsuit against the school district, which is located outside Indianapolis.
The dispute arose in connection with an anti-abortion student club called Noblesville Students for Life, a local chapter of Students for Life of America, that E.D. formed during her freshman year at Noblesville High School.
The school approved the formation of the group and permitted the girl to advertise it at an activities fair during which she displayed a table-top poster with the group’s mission statement and a sign that stated, “I am the pro-life generation.” She also wore a shirt bearing the same slogan.
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.”
A school official told the girl that student group flyers appearing on school walls should contain only the club’s name and the location, time and date of its meeting, but not photographs of signage, according to court papers.
According to court papers filed by the school, the girl and her mother then sought approval for the same flyer from a different school administrator. The mother’s involvement fueled concerns among school officials that the group was not truly student-led, prompting the club’s suspension for the rest of the semester, the school’s court papers said.
The former student filed a lawsuit in response to the denial of her proposed flyers and her club’s revocation. She said in court papers that an administrator expressed concerns about the political nature of flyers, especially the “Defund Planned Parenthood” signage.
The girl is represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal group that has brought other cases on behalf of anti-abortion plaintiffs.
The dispute implicates a 1988 Supreme Court ruling in a case from Missouri called Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier. In that case, the court ruled that schools may restrict student speech in channels that are not deemed “public forums” or where the speech at issue is inconsistent with the school’s educational mission.
An Indianapolis-based federal judge in 2024 sided with Noblesville Schools, finding the district was authorized to regulate the content of student flyers displayed on school walls. The Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in 2025, prompting the girl’s appeal to the Supreme Court.
Conservative Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s decision denying the appeal, writing that the justices should have used the opportunity to revisit the 1988 decision in the Hazelwood case.
John Bursch, a lawyer at the Alliance Defending Freedom, said his group supports Alito’s view.
“We agree with Justice Alito’s dissent that the court should have granted the petition to clarify the line between government and student speech,” Bursch said. “Public-school officials should not be in the business of censoring student speech that takes place outside the school’s curriculum.”
(Reporting by John Kruzel; Editing by Will Dunham)
Comments