Policy announced as SFLA’s Georgia Tech group wins lawsuit after their invitation to Dr. Alveda King blocked for being too “religious”
“Cutting taxpayer funds to schools that refuse to respect students’ Constitutional rights is probably the only way to get the attention of academics who seem to appreciate only those students who agree with them or are too afraid to speak up,” said SFLA’s Kristan Hawkins.
WASHINGTON D.C. (09-10-2020) – Following the announcement of a new Trump Administration policy designed to protect student free speech and religious freedom on college and university campuses, Students for Life of America President Kristan Hawkins praised the administration for “using the power of the purse to make the point that taxpayers won’t pay for Unconstitutional policies and practices. Students for Life of America’s experiences illustrate the vital of need of this policy. Today we are releasing news of a win against Georgia Tech as a result of a lawsuit filed by ADF. A campus event with Dr. Aveda King was blocked because she was considered too ‘religious.’ Viewpoint discrimination cannot be tolerated by pro-life Americans, and we are willing to fight to protect our right to speak up for the preborn.” Click here to read more about that case.
According to the Associated Press: “As part of the policy, the Education Department can suspend or terminate grants to public universities found in court to have violated the First Amendment. In extreme cases, schools could become ineligible for any further grants. The same actions could be taken against private universities found in court to have violated their own speech codes. Public universities could also lose funding if they fail to provide religious student groups the same rights and benefits as other campus groups, including the use of campus facilities and access to student fee funding. That edict does not apply to private colleges, which have more flexibility in limiting speech on their campuses.”
When President Trump made the initial announcement about the enhanced free speech policy at the White House, Students for Life of America students were featured in that event because of what they had endured to protect their free speech rights. To learn more about their stories, click here.
Writing on the issue in an op-ed on Fox News, Hawkins detailed the consequences of suppressing free-speech on college campuses. Hawkins noted, “A pattern of harassment on school campuses is well documented as student governments and school officials use a virtual poll tax on speech they don’t like with fees, denial of the use school fees for pro-life events, a Heckler’s veto in which any disgruntled student can shut down an event, or require “Trigger Warnings” that pro-life speech is imminent. Such administrative weapons are commonly employed against those who support both mother and pre-born infant. Meanwhile, vandalism and outright theft of pro-life displays is a common occurrence when students go out to engage their peers in conversation. And now students also face threats of violence.”
For interviews, e-mail Kristi Hamrick at khamrick@studentsforlife.org
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Students for Life of America (SFLA) is the nation’s largest, pro-life, youth organization. Headquartered in Fredericksburg, VA, SFLA serves more than 1,240 groups on college and university, middle and high school, medical and law school campuses in all 50 states. Student pro-life organizations work to confront policies on their campuses to support pregnant and parenting students, to end Planned Parenthood’s relationships with schools and communities, and to change minds of their peers about abortion. SFLA has more conversations with those most targeted by the abortion industry every day, week, and year than any other pro-life outreach in the world and mobilizes the Pro-Life Generation to confront abortion at the local, state and national levels daily. Every week, Students for Life entities reach more than 2 million people across social media platforms to have nearly 200,000 digital conversations with the most engaged pro-life online audience in the world.
