FARGO, N.D. – Administrators at Fargo North and Davies high schools find themselves in a sticky legal situation after they denied equal access to students seeking to establish pro-life clubs.

Several students at Fargo North High School have been working since February to launch a Students for Life pro-life student club, but faced a series of hurdles by school officials who initially rejected their application, Valley News Live reports.

Sophomore Brigid O’Keefe told the news site “they initially denied our request,” but the students protested the decision and school officials referred the matter to district leaders, who then approved the club as an “outside agency.”

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“We get a room for an hour to meet and that’s it, and we’re discouraged from putting up a lot of flyers and interacting with students,” O’Keefe said.

It was a similar situation at the district’s Davies High School, where sophomore Katie McPherson submitted an application in September 2014 to start a Students for Life club. School administrators ultimately denied the requests to form an official school club, alleging the groups are “religious in nature,” and cannot be condoned by the district, according to emails the news site.

“Even though there were concerns over the group’s religious background the school allows the group Teens for Christ to hold meetings,” according to the news site.

O’Keefe and McPherson then employed the help of Students for Life of America, which in turn contacted the Thomas More Society, a public interest law firm based in Chicago.

“Denying high school students the opportunity to start a club because it promotes the pro-life message is outright discrimination,” Students for Life of America president Kristan Hawkins told Valley News Live.

“Since administrators have refused to allow students at Fargo North or Davies to start their pro-life clubs and educate their peers on the tragedy of abortion, Brigid, Katie, and their pro-life classmates had to seek assistance from attorneys at Thomas More Society to get their clubs off the ground,” Hawkins said.

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Thomas More attorney Jocelyn Floyd told KFGO-AM, however, that district officials continue to discriminate against the students by classifying the clubs as “outside agencies.”

“They can’t use the name of the school in the name of their clubs, they can’t put up posters, they can’t have announcements about any of their events in the school announcements,” Floyd said. “They’ve been denied access to the student club forum that every other club gets.”

“ … The school district and administrators at Fargo North and Davies high schools are treating pro-life students as second class citizens, forcing them to abide by a policy that was designed to protect students from exploitation by businesses, not to censor students’ own free speech,” Floyd told Valley News Live.

Floyd also pointed out that the schools allow other non-curricular student clubs like the Fellowship of Christian Athletes and gay-straight alliances.

“They have permitted a gay-straight alliance at each of these schools, and again regardless of where you stand on the issue these are the controversial hot button issues of our day and it is important for the students to be exposed and start thinking and talking about them at this age, so it’s interesting that they allowed those and when it came to the question of life decided they didn’t want to take a stance,” she said.

A Fargo North High School principal previously told students the gay-straight alliances are “legally protected,” and pro-life groups are not, according to the news site.

The Thomas More Society is demanding school officials reconsider their decision to deny the Students for Life clubs the same privileges other clubs enjoy.

Fargo schools superintendent Jeff Schatz, meanwhile, is refusing to discuss the situation with the media until district attorneys “have fully reviewed the matter,” Valley News Live reports.