NOBLESVILLE, INDIANA — The Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear an appeal regarding a high school's restriction on student club flyers. The flyers contained the phrase "Defund Planned Parenthood."

The decision leaves intact a lower court ruling supporting the school's policy. The dispute originated at Noblesville High School in Noblesville, Indiana. In 2021, a student identified in court papers as E.D. founded Noblesville Students for Life, a chapter of Students for Life of America. The high school hosts more than 70 noncurriculum-based student clubs.

School policy permits approved clubs to post meeting flyers on common area walls but prohibits political or disruptive content, according to court filings. E.D. submitted two proposed meeting posters to the school's assistant principal. The proposed posters featured photographs of students holding signs that read "Defund Planned Parenthood" and "I am the Pro-Life Generation." An assistant principal denied approval for the posters and instructed E.D. to include only the club name and meeting details. E.D. and her mother, Lisa Duell, met with the school's dean, who confirmed the phrase "Defund Planned Parenthood" could not be included. The school's principal later suspended the club's approval, citing concerns about student leadership due to parental involvement and refusal to follow flyer instructions. The club was reinstated in 2022 and remains active.

E.D.'s parents and the student club initiated a lawsuit against the school, alleging a violation of First Amendment rights. A federal district court ruled in favor of the school. The court found that the flyers could reasonably be perceived to bear the school's endorsement and applied the Supreme Court's 1988 Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier decision to its ruling. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit upheld the district court's decision, stating that the school's restriction on political content aims to maintain neutrality on political controversy. "This is not a case about tolerating private student speech. To the contrary, E.D. was permitted to wear her pro-life shirt to school and hand out her flyers to students at the activities fair. Instead, it is a case about whether the school must lend its resources (here, literally its walls) — and, by extension, its authority — to disseminate student messages," the court wrote in its opinion.

E.D. appealed to the Supreme Court with representation from the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative judicial organization. Lawyers for Noblesville High School argued in their filing that the case addresses whether a school must use its facilities to disseminate student political messages. In 1988, the court ruled in Hazelwood School District v. Kuhlmeier that schools may exercise editorial control over school-sponsored speech if reasonably related to legitimate pedagogical concerns. This contrasts with the 1969 ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines that students retain constitutional free speech rights in school.

Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the denial of certiorari. He wrote in his dissent that the court should clarify the relationship between its 1988 decision on school-sponsored activities and subsequent government-speech rulings.