The Kennesaw State University chapter of Ratio Christi, a Christian student organization that seeks to “bring together faith and reason to establish the intellectual voice of Christ in the University,” is suing the school over their restriction of a pro-life display to a tiny ‘free-speech zone’ that occupies just .08% of the campus.
The federal lawsuit sees the Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian-based advocacy group, litigating on behalf of plaintiffs Ratio Christi and Zachary Bohannon. The suit alleges that the school’s ‘free-speech zones’ are unconstitutional, violating students’ First Amendment rights by limiting or barring messages thought to be controversial. Those messages, or rather images, are those of aborted fetuses meant to display the horrors of abortion. The school told Ratio Christi their display could stay if certain posters were removed, but the group refused to back down and was relegated to the free-speech zone.
While graphic, the exhibit in the past has been used to foster discussion and debate over the issue of abortion. By relegating the display to a little-seen or used area, argues ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, the school has violated students’ First Amendment rights. “Kennesaw State’s speech zones are unconstitutional because the First Amendment exists precisely to protect speech that government officials think is controversial. Because today’s students will be tomorrow’s leaders and voters, universities should live by example in demonstrating the importance of our freedoms protected by the First Amendment instead of communicating to an entire generation that the Constitution doesn’t matter.”
The ADF has participated in similar lawsuits at other schools, including one at Miami (OH) University in 2017.
