SCOTUS rejects Mass. student's challenge to school's ‘two genders' T-shirt ban
Conservative justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the decision not to hear the case, which was brought before SCOTUS on Tuesday, May 27.
'This case presents an issue of great importance for our nation's youth: whether public schools may suppress student speech either because it expresses a viewpoint that the school disfavors or because of vague concerns about the likely effect of the speech on the school atmosphere or on students who find the speech offensive,' Alito wrote.
The case formed after seventh grader Liam Morrison was barred from wearing a T-shirt that said 'there are only two genders' at Nichols Middle School in Middleborough in March 2023.
By refusing to review the case, the Supreme Court justices left in place a federal appeals court ruling that said it would not second-guess the decision of educators in Middleborough, the Associated Press reported, to not allow the T-shirt to be worn in a school environment because of a negative impact on transgender and gender-nonconforming students.
Last May, Morrison sued Middleborough Public Schools after he wore the shirt to school in March 2023 and was told by administrators that it abridged the district's dress code, which prohibits clothing with hate speech or that targets protected groups.
Morrison's lawyers — who are from conservative Christian advocacy groups Alliance for Defending Freedom and Massachusetts Family Institute — argued that their client's free speech rights were being violated, and that the dress code's hate speech clause was vague and overly broad.
'Students don't lose their free speech rights the moment they walk into a school building,' Alliance for Defending Freedom Senior Counsel David Cortman said in a press release.
'This case isn't about T-shirts; it's about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn't allowed to express a view that differs from their own,' Cortman said.
The case sparked a debate over free speech for public school students under the Constitution's First Amendment.
The school district believes it was only trying to avoid classroom disruptions by enforcing its dress code, which bars any 'hate speech or imagery.'
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and a district court judge have ruled in favor of the school.
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