Posted on 04/08/2015 5:14:53 PM PDT by Coleus
Two students seeking to start school pro-life clubs in Fargo, North Dakota, are claiming they are victims of unconstitutional discrimination from officials opposed to their cause.
According to a complaint letter sent by the Thomas More Society (TMS), a public interest law firm assisting the students, Brigid O’Keefe of Fargo North High School and Katie McPherson of Fargo Davies High School have each spent months attempting to establish pro-life clubs at their schools, to no avail. McPherson first applied to found a club in September 2014, while O’Keefe applied last February. Both had their applications declined, with O’Keefe saying she and other potential club members were subjected to close scrutiny of their religious beliefs.
Instead of approving the organizations as official school clubs, the Fargo School District has decided to classify each of them as “outside agencies,” according to TMS. That means they can’t put up advertisements for the groups in school, can’t host school events, and can’t include include a school name in the names of the clubs.
“The School District and administrators at Fargo North and Davies High Schools are treating pro-life students as second class citizens, forcing them to abide by a policy that was designed to protect students from exploitation by businesses, not to censor the students’ own free speech,” Jocelyn Floyd, an associate counsel with TMS, said in the society’s statement. The policy Floyd refers to is Fargo’s District Solicitation Policy, which is intended to prevent companies from engaging in school-sanctioned direct advertising to students.
TMS demands that the district immediately recognize both organizations as regular student clubs. According to the society, Fargo’s schools currently or in the past have had several other student organizations which possess an ideological bent but are still recognized as full clubs, includes Fellowship of Christian Athletes groups and gay/straight alliances.
According to the complaint letter, officials at Fargo North actually distinguished between a gay/straight alliance and pro-life club, saying that the former was acceptable because it dealt with a “protected” group, while the pro-life movement enjoys no such protections. At Davies, meanwhile, denial was based on the fact that even though the group was explicitly not religious in nature, it would inevitably take on a religious tone because of the beliefs of its members. A request for comment from Fargo Public Schools was not immediately returned.
Brigid O’Keefe, sophomore at Fargo North
She should get a buddy to create an abortion club, and see if that is allowed
How ironic!
While the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect religious expression, there are no such protections for LGBT issues. So once again, low-information, pro-gay activist agents of a state are unthinkingly violating Section 1 of the 14th Amendment imo.
14th Amendment, Section 1:All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States [emphasis added]; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
Note that the “privileges or immunities” term which John Bingham, the main author of Section 1, used in that section is just another way to refer to constitutionally enumerated rights, most of these well-known rights, including 1st Amendment-protected freedom of religious expression, listed in the Bill of Rights.
If you’re talking about the Equal Protections Clause (EPC), please note the following. Obama’s activist justices have been scandalously taking advantage of the fact that low-information citizens don’t understand that corrupt Supreme Court during the Obama Administration has been testing the constitutionality of things that have already been decided by previous generations of justices, Obamacare for example.
More specifically, regardless that Obama’s activist justices gave the green light to Obamacare, they wrongly ignored that the Supreme Court has historically clarified that the states have never delegated to the feds, expressly via the Constitution, the specific power to regulate, tax and spend for intrastate healthcare purposes.
”State inspection laws, health laws, and laws for regulating the internal commerce of a State, and those which respect turnpike roads, ferries, &c. are not within the power granted to Congress [emphases added].” —Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
“Congress is not empowered to tax for those purposes which are within the exclusive province of the States.” —Justice John Marshall, Gibbons v. Ogden, 1824.
Regarding PC, pro-gay interpretations of the EPC by Obama’s activist judges, they’re likewise foolishly gambling that low-information voters aren’t eventually going to find out that the Supreme Court has historically decided cases that deal with the EPC as it relates to discrimination by the states on the basis of sex, and also 10th Amendment-protected state power to regulate marriage. These cases are as follows.
State sovereignty respecting justices had decided in the state’s favor in both cases regardless of claims of the EPC.
What Obama’s activist justices don’t want low-informantion citizens to understand about the EPC is this. A previous generation of Justices had clarified that EPC did not add new protections to the Constitution. It only strengthens those protections which the states have amended the Constitution to expressly protect.
“3. The right of suffrage was not necessarily one of the privileges or immunities of citizenship before the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment, and that amendment does not add to these privileges and immunities. It simply furnishes additional guaranty for the protection of such as the citizen already had [emphasis added].” —Minor v. Happersett, 1874.
In fact, the Court’s clarification of the EPC in Minor is probably based on the clarification of Section 1 of 14A by John Bingham in the congressional record, Bingham the main author of Section 1. Bingham had indicated that 14A applies only protections amended to the Constitution by the states to the states.
“Mr. Speaker, this House may safely follow the example of the makers of the Constitution and the builders of the Republic, by passing laws for enforcing all the privileges and immunities of the United States as guaranteed by the amended Constitution and expressly enumerated in the Constitution [emphasis added].” —John Bingham, Congressional Globe, House of Representatives, 42nd Congress, 1st Session. (See lower half of third column.)
But more importantly, note that state later ratified the 19th Amendment, effectively overturning the Court’s decision in Minor.
And it remains that the states have never amended the Constitution to expressly protect gay issues. So the states are free to make laws and policies which discriminate on the basis of constitutionally unprotected LGBT issues, as long as such laws do not also unreasonably abridge enumerated rights.
Not how they’re supposed to “think”, so we’re not allowing it. Little brats.
Too true: neither the unborn nor groups that would speak for those who cannot enjoy any protections whatsoever...
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