Minn. pro-life club no longer aborted from campus life
School district agrees to recognize Christian student club in wake of ADF lawsuit
ADF attorney sound bite (6/3/11): David Cortman
The district initially denied the All Life Is Valuable (ALIV) Club official status because it allegedly “does not support the student body as a whole.” Despite that claim, school officials recognized more than a dozen other non-curricular clubs, including the Environmental and Animé clubs, which enjoyed benefits and access previously denied to the ALIV Club.
“Pro-life students should not be discriminated against for expressing their beliefs,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman. “School officials did the right thing by finally granting the ALIV Club official status and no longer assuming the authority to trump the constitutionally protected rights of students. As the U.S. Supreme Court has noted, students do not shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate.”
Before ADF attorneys filed suit, the principal of St. Michael-Albertville High School denied equal treatment to the ALIV Club, even though District Policy 801 requires the district to grant equal access to student clubs wishing to meet for “religious, political, or philosophical reasons during non-instructional time.”
Hopkins attorney Charles Shreffler, one of more than 2,000 attorneys in the ADF alliance, is serving as local counsel in the lawsuit, ALIV Club v. Independent School District #885. In light of the district’s decision to recognize the club, a voluntary dismissal of the suit was filed Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
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ABOUT David Cortman
David A. Cortman serves as senior counsel and vice president of U.S. litigation with Alliance Defending Freedom. He has been practicing law since 1996, and currently supervises a team of over 40 attorneys and legal staff who specialize in constitutional law, focusing on religious freedom, sanctity of life, and marriage and family. Cortman has litigated hundreds of constitutional law cases including two victories at the U.S. Supreme Court. In Trinity Lutheran Church v. Comer, he secured a 7-2 victory that overturned Missouri’s denial of a religious school’s participation in a state funding program. Cortman also argued Reed v. Town of Gilbert, securing a 9-0 ruling that prohibits the government from discriminating against religious speech. A member of the bar in Georgia, Florida, Arizona, and the District of Columbia, he is also admitted to practice in over two dozen federal courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court. Cortman obtained his J.D. magna cum laude from Regent University School of Law.