A lawsuit was brought against Eastern Michigan University this week by the Christian legal ministry Alliance Defending Freedom on behalf of campus pro-life group Students for Life.
A press release from ADF said its attorneys filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit on Tuesday. It said EMU officials have denied Students for Life funding for mandatory student activity fees.
Students for Life requested the funding in February for a pro-life
display called the Genocide Awareness Project. The display, equipped with photo murals, compares abortion to genocide. Because of this, university officials deemed the display “biased, one-sided and too controversial,” the release said.
EMU officials allowed this because they said the pro-life group was promoting “political or ideological” ideals. However, the release said EMU has been known to fund other organizations and groups that want to share their views.
The lawsuit, Students for Life at Eastern Michigan University v. Parker, drawn up by ADF attorneys, said university officials have been inconsistent with funding with political and ideological speech, and the First Amendment Freedom of Speech Clause “prohibits content and viewpoint discrimination in a public university’s allocated of mandatory student fee funding.”
David Hacker, senior legal counsel for the ADF, said in the release, “The university funded the advocacy of other student organizations, but singled out Students for Life for exclusion based purely on its viewpoint.”
An email statement from EMU said, “This situation arises out of a request to Student Government by a student group for funding. We just received the complaint and will review it before responding.”
