LAS VEGAS, September 3, 2015 (LifeSiteNews) — A Las Vegas student has won her fight for First Amendment rights as her high school has agreed to allow her pro-life club.
Last December, Angelique Clark submitted an application to create a pro-life group at West Career and Technical Academy. According to a press release from the Thomas More Society (TMS), which represented Clark, she received no response for three months — and was then told that the club was denied by the school's assistant principal.
Reasons for denial included that abortion is “controversial,” that pro-abortion students and others would not feel welcome, and that others besides a high school student were “more qualified” to speak on the issue of abortion.
Now, seven months later, the school has reversed its position, just two weeks after TMS filed a lawsuit on behalf of Clark. The school responded within a week, and on August 31 Clark's acceptance was official.
“Angelique Clark will be allowed to form a non-curriculum related, non-school sponsored, student initiated, student led pro-life group at West Career & Technical Academy,” said a letter from school district General Counsel Carlos McDade. While some details still have to be worked, TMS says that “dismissal of the lawsuit” is expected.
“I am so excited that I will finally be able to start a pro-life club at my high school,” said Clark in a statement. “I started with the idea to provide a safe place to educate my fellow students on the beauty of life at all stages, and I am very thankful to Students for Life of America and the Thomas More Society for helping me defend my rights so that students at my school can now gather for life.”
“I look forward to running the WCTA pro-life club with all the other students who have already signed up to be a voice for the voiceless and ignored—the preborn and the mothers who think abortion is their only choice,” said the junior.
Thomas More Society represented Clark because she approached Students for Life of America, who took up her cause. SFLA president Kristan Hawkins said in a statement that her group is “so proud of Angelique for representing the pro-life generation’s passion for the preborn and for her courage in standing up to a hostile school administration that was trying to take away her First Amendment rights.”