Massachusetts student fights ‘two genders’ shirt ban in U.S. appeals court
A federal appeals court appeared skeptical that a Massachusetts middle school violated a student’s right to free speech by requiring him to stop wearing a T-shirt that said, “There are only two genders.”
BOSTON — A federal appeals court on Thursday appeared skeptical that a Massachusetts middle school violated a student’s right to free speech by requiring him to stop wearing a T-shirt that said, “There are only two genders.”
A lawyer for Liam Morrison, 13, told the three judges of a 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel in Boston that officials at the Nichols Middle School in Middleborough violated the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment by censoring him when he expressed a view opposing its pro-LGBTQ stances.
The lawyer, David Cortman, said Morrison wore the shirt in seventh grade to show he disagreed with the school’s support of “views that biology alone does not determine sex,” which it expressed via pro-LGBTQ posters and Pride Month celebrations.
“What the school cannot do, even though they could share their own views, is decide that only students who agree with those views can speak, but anyone who disagrees should be silenced,” Cortman said.
Yet Cortman, a lawyer with the conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, said that’s what the school did when it told him to either remove the shirt or leave for the day, which he did.
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