Jul 02, 2013 09:39 AM EDT By Staff Reporter, UniversityHerald Reporter

'Alliance Defending Freedom',' an Arizona based religious-freedom legal group, has filed a federal lawsuit against the University at Buffalo for demanding a security fee of $650 to hold an abortion debate from a  pro-life student group. Other student groups are not charged for similar events.

David Hacker Senior, legal counsel, said that when 'UB Students for Life' reserved space for a debate on abortion in April, the university asked them to pay a fee for campus security because officials thought the event would be controversial. On the other hand, when another student group organized a religious debate on belief,  it wasn't asked to pay any security fee.

Hacker said that the university has no guidelines in place to determine an event's controversial status. Officials decide whether an event falls under the controversial category or not.

"Public universities should encourage, not stifle, the free exchange of ideas," said Hacker. "University officials cannot arbitrarily decide to deem an event 'controversial' and then weigh down students with burdensome fees to engage in constitutionally protected free speech."

The security fee of around $650 was $150 more than the total amount of funding the anti-abortion student group receives from the Student Association annually. The group will be now forced to cancel  some of the activities it had planned for the year due to lack of funding.

The legal group argues that the security fee policy violates the First Amendment rights. The lawsuit states that the university officials 'create a system in which speech is reviewed without any standards, thus giving students no way to prove that a denial, restriction, or relocation of their speech was based on unconstitutional considerations.'

The debate on abortion was attended by approximately 225 people and caused no disturbance whatsoever.

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