The local student who was banned from wearing an “only two genders” shirt to middle school is receiving support from 18 states and free speech groups, as they call on the Supreme Court to hear his case.
The lawyers for Middleboro student Liam Morrison recently filed a petition with the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court in Boston ruled against him earlier this year. Now, 18 states and free speech advocates have filed friend-of-the-court briefs with the Supreme Court, asking it to take the case.
Liam last year was banned by school officials from wearing a shirt to school that read, “There are only two genders.” The 7th grader then wore a shirt that stated, “There are censored genders,” and again, he was ordered to take off the shirt.
A U.S. district judge previously ruled in favor of the Middleboro school officials, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit then affirmed the district court’s ruling.
This prompted Liam’s attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom to ask the Supreme Court to review the case and rule that Nichols Middle School violated the First Amendment when it stopped the student from wearing his shirts to school.
“Our legal system is built on the truth that the government cannot silence any speaker just because it disapproves of what they say,” ADF Senior Counsel and VP of U.S. Litigation David Cortman said in a statement.
“We appreciate the many states and organizations that have joined us in urging the Supreme Court to take this critical free speech case,” the lawyer added.
The 18 states backing Liam’s case are: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia.
The multi-state brief was led by the states of South Carolina and West Virginia.
“… the First Circuit’s decision undercuts one of the most important purposes of public education: forming civic virtues by pursuing truth — even when uncomfortable,” reads the multi-state brief. “The Court should grant the Petition to restore that function.
“By silencing L.M., the First Circuit created a speech-hostile standard that — contrary to (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District) — allows schools to restrain even silent, passive displays of speech that cause no actual disruption,” the states added. “It split from other circuits on issues like what facts a school must show to justify a restriction on student speech. And it effectively sanctioned viewpoint discrimination in public schools. If the decision below holds, public schools could become an incomplete forum of ideas, more concerned with avoiding offense than developing character.”
The Middleboro school district each year celebrates Pride month, hanging Pride flags and sending the message that there are “an unlimited number of genders,” one of Liam’s lawyers had argued in front of the appeals court.
In response to the school’s view, Liam wore the controversial shirt to Nichols Middle School last year.
School officials in response told Liam to either take off the shirt or leave school for the day. Liam chose to miss the rest of his classes that day.
When the Middleboro principal pulled Liam out of class and told him he had to take off his shirt, the principal said they had received complaints about the words on his shirt — and that the words might make some students feel unsafe.
“Middleborough was enforcing a dress code, so it was making a forecast regarding the disruptive impact of a particular means of expression and not of, say, a stray remark on a playground, a point made during discussion or debate, or a classroom inquiry,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling. “The forecast concerned the predicted impact of a message that would confront any student proximate to it throughout the school day.”
School officials “knew the serious nature of the struggles, including suicidal ideation, that some of those students had experienced related to their treatment based on their gender identities by other students, and the effect those struggles could have on those students’ ability to learn,” the appeals court wrote.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is one of the free speech groups backing Liam’s case.
“Here, instead of teaching students to discuss controversial topics, the school censored Petitioner’s passive non-disruptive expression, subjectively fearing possible future psychological harm to other students,” FIRE wrote in its brief. “To ensure our public grade schools educate the next generation of Americans about the First Amendment in both word and deed, FIRE files this brief in support of Petitioner.”
“If the First Circuit’s broad expansion of Tinker’s ‘invasion of the rights of others’ exception is allowed to stand, school administrators nationwide will wield it to censor unpopular or dissenting viewpoints — miseducating students about their expressive rights in our pluralist society,” FIRE added. “This Court should grant certiorari to reverse the First Circuit and reaffirm Tinker’s limitations on schools’ ability to censor non-disruptive student speech.”
