Rio Rancho Middle School in New Mexico went without a recognized club for pro-life students last year because its principal allegedly said allowing such a club wouldn’t be “fair” to pro-choice students.
After a lawsuit threat from the Thomas More Society, a religious-liberty law firm, the school district has backed down and allowed the pro-life club to start, Students for Life of America said Thursday.
Rio Rancho Public Schools caved less than two days after the law firm sent a warning letter to Superintendent V. Sue Cleveland and Principal Lynda Kitts, pointing out that the Supreme Court has long barred public schools from restricting the expression of students based on their viewpoint.
Dylan Fredette sought Principal Kitts’ permission to start a pro-life club last November, submitting a written proposal and explaining the club’s intended activities, such as “diaper drives” to raise money for abortion alternatives, according to the letter.
She told him it would not be “fair” to students on the “other side of the issue” if the school allowed a pro-life club to start, and said it sounded too controversial, according to the firm. Kitts, however, “disclaimed any memory” of the conversation when Fredette asked her to confirm it later that month.
The principal didn’t respond to his next attempt to ask permission in March, even though by then he had also submitted a proposed constitution for the club and found a faculty advisor. The student’s younger brother Isaiah now wants to start the “Phoenixes for Life” club that Dylan was prevented from starting before he left middle school.
Kitts’ “fair” rationale for denying the club “is as ridiculous as conditioning the ability of students to form a Fellowship of Christian Athletes club upon the concurrent formation of a Fellowship of Atheist Athletes club,” the law firm’s president and a local attorney told Cleveland and Kitts.
“The school has shamefully and disgustingly continued to throw up illegal obstacles in the way of a group of students who want to start a group to reach out to fellow students and educate them about the injustice of abortion,” SFLA said in a release Tuesday, before the about-face.
The school district told the Albuquerque Journal that it notified the Thomas More Society the same day it received the letter that the club was allowed to form.
It apparently threw Principal Kitts, who didn’t respond to a Journal request, under the bus:
It also said processes in place to address student or parent concerns weren’t followed in Fredette’s case and had the district been aware there was a concern “it would have been resolved immediately.”
“In this case, we wish the process would have been followed as there would have been a simple resolution,” the district’s comment said.
The Journal casts doubt on whether the timeline happened the way it’s portrayed in the Thomas More Society letter. The students’ local lawyer, John Nilan, refused to give the newspaper Dylan’s email to the principal.
The district said its policies allow “religious, political, and philosophical” student clubs, and another pro-life club already exists at another school in the district.
Read the warning letter and Journal report.
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