News

Aug 11, 2008

Students for Life at Wayne State wanted to host Pro-Life Week 2008. To pay for the five days of events, they asked for the same student activities fees that other student groups use to pay for their themed, week-long celebrations. But Joseph Martins, litigation counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, says the group's request was denied because one of the events during the week would have requested that students think about or, optionally, pray for the mother of an unborn child for nine months.



"So it simply only had one religious reference," the attorney explains. "It just had the word 'pray' in there. And the university denied funding for the entire event, all five events...simply because one of the days said that students might be allowed to pray as part of the event." Or, as the school's budget committee put it, "because of the spiritual and religious programming references...."

Even after removing the reference to prayer, the group's funding request was still denied, this time because officials feared other students -- particularly women who had had an abortion -- might be offended by the pro-life message. "Student groups can't be discriminated against because of their beliefs. And that's what we have here...," says Martins. ADF says the bottom line is that the values of the pro-life student group conflict with the "politically correct philosophies embraced by the university." And that, says the legal group, is not sufficient legal basis for discrimination.

Martins alleges that pro-abortion groups have already received funding from the student activities fund. That, he says, is de facto evidence that the university has set up an unconstitutional funding mechanism that practices viewpoint discrimination. On behalf of Students for Life, ADF filed suit against the school on Wednesday.