A Christian legal group filed a lawsuit on behalf of Catholic students and chaperones who said they were removed from the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum for donning beanies with anti-abortion messages last month.
The American Center for Law and Justice filed a lawsuit Tuesday known as Kristi L. v. National Air & Space Museum, claiming the museum in Washington, D.C., “kicked out” nearly a dozen Catholic high school students and their chaperones on Jan. 20 for wearing anti-abortion hats they had worn to the annual national March for Life.
SMITHSONIAN PROVIDES ‘IMMEDIATE TRAINING’ AFTER KICKING OUT CATHOLIC SCHOOL GROUP
The plaintiffs belong to Our Lady of the Rosary School based in Greenville, South Carolina, and had traveled to Washington for the annual event wearing the same matching hats with the words “Rosary PRO-LIFE.”
ACLJ claimed the students were “mocked” and “accosted” after they went into the museum following the anti-abortion event on the National Mall, according to the 20-page complaint.
“Once in the [federal] museum, they were accosted several times and told they would be forced to leave unless they removed their pro-life hats. The group all wore the same blue hat that simply said, ‘Rosary PRO-LIFE.’ Other individuals in the museum were wearing hats of all kinds without issue,” according to the ACLJ.
At one point, a museum employee allegedly “proceeded to inform Plaintiffs that they must remove their hats because the museum was a ‘neutral zone,’ and that the First Amendment ‘does not apply here,'” according to the lawsuit, which also claimed the students were subjected to inappropriate expletives.
Lawyers for ACLJ strongly pushed back on the alleged claims that free speech protections did not apply to the museum, writing in their filing that the Smithsonian Institution is a federal entity that receives “more than $1 billion” from the government per fiscal year.
The Smithsonian released a statement to the public last week apologizing for the encounter and said employees involved in the matter did not adhere to the institution’s policy or protocol.
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“We apologize that visitors to the National Air and Space Museum were asked to remove their hats on Friday, Jan. 20. A security officer mistakenly told young visitors that their pro-life hats were not permitted in the museum. Asking visitors to remove hats and clothing is not in keeping with our policy or protocols,” the museum said in a statement. “We provided immediate retraining to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of error.”
The Washington Examiner contacted the Smithsonian Institution for comment.
