Freedom of Speech for Students Vanishes If SCOTUS Doesn’t Protect the ‘Only Two Genders’ Shirt: Groups

“There are only two genders.” “Let’s go, Brandon!” The Gadsden Flag and “Don’t Tread On Me.”

Non-disruptive expressions of protest, ideology and humor among students are in danger of being eliminated from public schools if the Supreme Court does not reprimand a federal appeals court that approved a ban on “degrading messages” that harm the school environment, free speech, religious issues could ‘poison’. Liberty, conservative and pro-life groups told the Supreme Court in friend-of-the-court briefs.

In their support of censored Massachusetts student Liam Morrison, they were joined by the Republican attorneys general of South Carolina, West Virginia and 16 other states, as well as a Colorado student who was banned last year from carrying a backpack with the The Gadsden flag – a so-called “slave trade” symbol – until its governor intervened.

The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals affirms Middleborough Public Schools’ ban on Morrison wearing the dual-gender shirt to protest students’ encouragement of LGBTQ messages, and another ban that replaced “just two” with “censored” after the first ban.

The three-judge panel, all nominated by Democratic presidents, carefully interpreted the historic SCOTUS precedent Tinkerwhich upheld students’ right to wear anti-war armbands at school, as they do not include expressions that “demean purported markers of personal identity,” even if done “passively, silently, and without mention of specific students.”

Restrictions on protest against gender identity are also at issue in a newer lawsuit against a New Hampshire school districtwhich is part of the Boston-based 1st Circuit, which banned participants in high school girls’ football games from wearing “XX” bracelets to protest the eligibility of men to play.

The Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit, which includes Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, could provide the impetus for SCOTUS involvement through a ruling opposite that of the 1st Circuit.

The The full appeals court voted Nov. 1 to rehear a pre-enforcement challenge to the Olentangy Local School District’s ban on students “repeatedly and intentionally using non-preferred pronouns to refer to their classmates,” which is a The divided three-judge panel declined to block this summer.

The The 6th Circuit has already banned Shawnee State University in Ohio of punishing a professor refused to call a student by the preferred pronouns followed by a big settlement.

The Pacific Justice Institute, Concerned Women for America and the National Legal Foundation told SCOTUS that policies like Middleborough’s have “spread across the country,” under the assumption that gender-confused children are “vulnerable souls who need protection from the knowledge that others disagree with the concept” that gender is not fixed.

“At the same time, Middleborough defends the premise that these same children are fully capable of deciding for themselves” to participate in “life-changing” medical interventions, their admittedly brief brief says, arguing that children cannot both be mature enough to choose so-called gender-affirming care and so immature that they cannot hear disagreements about gender identity.

“Schools across the country have used these speech codes to censor speech on one side of the issue,” wrote Parents who defend educationthe plaintiff in the Olentangy case.

It noted that courts upheld a Michigan district that banned clothing with the euphemism “Let’s Go, Brandon” as “indecent, indecent, vulgar or profane” because it alluded to a profane chant – now on the 6th Circuit – and one California district punishes a first-grader for giving a black classmate a drawing with the text ‘every life’ is important, since last week pending oral argument in the 9th Circuit.

Middleborough “allowed – and even encouraged – speeches supporting the idea that there are more than two genders,” while banning Morrison’s opposing view, PDE said. “That error alone justifies this Court’s assessment (and reversal).”

With the elimination of federal abortion rights and the return of the issue to states, “the need to protect the ability of pro-life citizens to exercise their First Amendment rights to persuade their fellow citizens has increased,” including in schools , “received new urgency. ” wrote the Life Legal Defense Foundation and Young America’s Foundation.

California’s Buchanan High School banned a YAF chapter member from displaying a ‘Pro-life Timeline’ on fetal development, saying it must ‘remain neutral on controversial topics’ like biology, but teachers do too allows violating district policy by “putting up pro-LGBTQ decorations.” in their classrooms,” they said.

Florida’s Sebring High School went even further against its YAF chapter, “unilaterally removing their Pro-life timeline from their approved display, apparently because another student complained,” and only subjecting YAF to speech-related pre-approval requirements until “a legal advisor intervened”. the groups also wrote.

“This case is about the student’s right to respond to the opinions of school officials,” National Religious Broadcasters wrote. “School officials have made it abundantly clear that (Morrison’s) views are wrong and unwelcome,” but the 1st Circuit reviewed this case as if the only message transgender students received at their school was his shirt.

The Letter from the Republican AGswho primarily represents the South, the Midwest and the Mountain West, said the ruling “undermines one of the most important goals of public education: the formation of civic virtues through the pursuit of truth – even when it is uncomfortable.”

They said the 1st Circuit is at odds with peers, creating a “speech-hostile standard” that lowered the bar for “what facts a school must show to justify a disability” and “effectively sanctioned viewpoint discrimination in public schools ‘ against the mildest expressions. , without disruption.

The Tinker siblings wore anti-war bracelets when “the national temperature reached a boiling point during the Vietnam War,” and their Iowa school district treated them as an unacceptable distraction from schoolwork that also caused “emotional turmoil” by to remind children of “the wounded and the dead” who were their neighbors, the letter states.

“Amid this bitter, explosive and disruptive debate,” for example over gender identity, SCOTUS demanded “proof of a major disruption before overseeing the speech” and ordered judges to “not just approve school decisions, but to maintain order and to carefully balance civic virtue.” the AGs said.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression echoed the AGs in deeming students’ freedom of expression “essential to public education” because, as the… Tinker The court said students “must live in this relatively tolerant, often controversial society.”

Schools tend to “censor large portions of controversial issues of public debate and disagreement” due to “the pressure and pull of our society’s culture wars,” but “must prepare students to learn the values ​​of tolerance and civil debate said FIRE. , noting that SCOTUS reaffirmed this just three years ago in the Mahanoj profane-cheerleader case.

The 1st Circuit “fundamentally redefines the concept of substantial disruption” by speculating that speech can cause “subjectively harmful psychological effects,” even contradicting its own opinion. Precedent for 2020 that “the speech must be directed at another student” before officials can dismiss it as a “violation of the rights of others” under Tinkerthe freedom of speech group said.

Jaiden Rodriguez received the support of Colorado’s Democratic Governor Jared Polis – recently in the news for in honor of the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr for Secretary of Health and Human Services — when his Colorado Springs charter school ordered then-12-year-old Rodriguez to remove his Gadsden flag patch and others because documented in viral video by his mother.

He and the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, which supports his support First Amendment lawsuit against Harrison School District 2reminded SCOTUS that the justices themselves recognized that “there are in fact only two genders” in the Bostock transgender discrimination precedent.

Without the requisite substantial disruption, “if a student listener experiences psychological distress when exposed to a speech on a matter of public interest,” the school has a duty to “staff that students develop resilience and a sense of self-worth that comes with responding to and attempting to refute the unpleasant speech,” their letter said.

SCOTUS should take the case” to emphasize that Tinker is not a ‘get out of jail free’ card for schools seeking to suppress traditional or conservative ideas, let alone biological facts that may make some uncomfortable,” they wrote.