LOS ANGELES – Nursing mothers lined up outside of Metropolitan High School on South Wilson Street in downtown Los Angeles Tuesday to feed their babies and protest the school district’s policy against breastfeeding.

The protest centers on Tanya Reyes, an English teacher who was recently told by school officials that she could not breastfeed her one-year-old daughter Solana in her classroom during her unpaid lunch break, KABC reports.

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According to CBS Los Angeles:

Reyes says she couldn’t talk on camera. She says this morning she got an email from her principal saying it was against district policy for teachers to talk to the media.

Another teacher who is on maternity leave for her second child, Nicolette Morales, organized the “nurse-in” to raise awareness about the situation and explain Reyes’ plight on her behalf.

Morales contends Solana won’t take a bottle, so Reyes’ babysitter has toted the child to her classroom daily to feed while students are at lunch, but after nearly two months school officials told the teacher the child is no longer welcome on campus and offered her a counselor’s office to pump her breast milk.

Instead, Reyes has trekked to the roadside outside of the school to breastfeed the child for the last week, Morales said.

“I think it’s preposterous to ask someone to come outside in a clearly diesel-infected area to provide lunch for their youth,” she said.

Mother Jenn Sherry Parry told the KABC the breastfeeding ban is bad for the baby and Reyes.

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“It’s stressing her out, it’s not only difficult for her to sit on the street to nurse, but she’s also producing less milk because we all know if you’re stressed out you produce less milk,” she said.

Los Angeles Unified School District officials issued a statement alleging the ban is not illegal, and they’ve “interacted with and have been both flexible and reasonable with the employee to accommodate her needs in accordance with our policy.”

“This is not about rules,” Parry said. “This is about lives and feeding babies.”

School officials allegedly told Reyes that allowing her child on campus during school hours is a “liability” that violates district policy. KABC requested a copy of the alleged policy from the district, and did not receive an immediate response.

“No baby should be on the street right now, trying to eat,” Parry told CBS Los Angeles. “This is a dirty street. And we’re in an industrial part of town.”

Morales said during her first pregnancy she was forced to pump in a copy room with little to no privacy, and believes the district should find a better way to accommodate new mothers who work in the district.

“There needs to be a designated space that is private for moms to be able to feed and provide for their kids,” she said.