A pro-life group is suing Georgia Tech for refusing to grant the student-led group fees for bringing Alveda King on campus for an event.

Georgia Institute of Technology's student government refused the request for funds for King's visit last fall contending that because she has been involved in religious ministries, her life was "inherently religious" and they could not separate that from the event about civil rights and abortion. Members of the Student Government Association also expressed concern that some students may be offended by the presence of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's niece and viewpoints she had expressed.

Students for Life of America spokesman Matt Lamb says it's unclear what the student government's reasoning was.

"Unfortunately, that's why we had to sue them because they didn't define it and didn't really explain what that means," Lamb shares with OneNewsNow. "And I definitely don't believe it's something that a student government should be determining when allocating student funding."

Alliance Defending Freedom has filed suit on behalf of the pro-life group, arguing that if the same standard of being "inherently religious" was applied to the famous civil rights leader MLK himself, he wouldn't be welcome on campus. The legal group also points out that the U.S. Supreme Court "made it clear 20 years ago that if public universities wish to force students to pay student activity fees, then those universities have a duty to ensure that the funds are distributed in a viewpoint-neutral manner."

Lamb

According to SFLA's Lamb, the event went forward after members of the pro-life group put up the money themselves. The lawsuit seeks reimbursement for the club – but that's not the only reason for the suit, says Lamb.

"And we'd also really like the students to understand that what they did isn't right," he explains. "We'd like the university to look at their own policies and look at how they allowed this to happen."

ADF senior counsel Tyson Langhofer seconds that objective. "Rather than exemplify this sort of hostility toward the First Amendment, universities should exemplify the importance of those freedoms," the attorney states. "When they don’t, they communicate to an entire generation that the Constitution doesn’t matter."

The case – Students for Life at Georgia Tech v. Regents of the University System of Georgia – was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Atlanta Division.