Pro-life group petitions Supreme Court after school refused ‘Defund Planned Parenthood’ poster

A student’s free speech rights “shouldn’t depend on the circuit where she attends school.”

Pro-life students in Indiana are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a freedom of speech case after their public school allegedly refused to allow a pro-life poster to be displayed.

The Noblesville Students for Life club is sending the petition to the high court after school officials allegedly censored posters with pro-life messaging, according to a Jan. 28 press release from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal group representing the student in the case.

At Noblesville High School, a public school northeast of Indianapolis, the students got permission to start the club, according to the legal group. Yet when they asked to hang flyers that contained messaging about defunding Planned Parenthood, the school claimed the flyers were too political.

The school ultimately ordered the club’s permission revoked, according to the Alliance Defending Freedom.

In September 2025, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit declined to hear the case, leading the group — including an individual student identified as “E.D.” — to petition the Supreme Court.

“All E.D. sought to do was post flyers — like all other club leaders could do — for an extracurricular club meeting she worked hard to organize,” the petition says. “Her free-speech rights shouldn’t depend on the circuit where she attends school.”

“Students don’t lose their constitutionally protected freedom of speech when they walk into a school building,” Alliance Defending Freedom attorney John Bursch said in a statement.

“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.”

There were about 70 other student-run groups at the school at the time, according to the legal group.

“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,” Bursch said.

Kristan Hawkins, president of Students for Life of America, voiced her support for the club.

“Free speech rights you can’t use don’t exist,” she said in a statement. “We are not going to forget about our students’ rights or ignore attempts to silence them, no matter how long it takes.”

Hawkins, whose organization supports pro-life students across the country in running pro-life clubs, said this kind of discrimination was “typical” for pro-life students.

“This Indiana case represents a typical abuse of students’ free-speech rights,” Hawkins said. “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.”

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