In a closely followed case, the United States Supreme Court on Tuesday morning declined to review the case of L.M. v. Town of Middleborough, which centered on a Massachusetts middle school student's First Amendment rights.
The student, identified as L.M., was prohibited by his school from wearing a T-shirt stating "There Are Only Two Genders" and, subsequently, another shirt reading "There Are CENSORED Genders" after the first was barred. The teacher expressed concern for the “physical safety” of the student body and claimed that “multiple members of the LGBTQ+ population at the school would be impacted by the t-shirt message” and could “potentially disrupt classes.” The principal also explained that other students had “complained” that the shirt “made them upset.”
The student - who is represented by Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian conservative legal powerhouse - filed a lawsuit against the School District arguing the prohibition turns the First Amendment on its head.
“It gives schools a blank check to suppress unpopular political or religious views, allows censorship based on ‘negative psychological impact’ or ideological offense, rejects a public school’s duty to inculcate tolerance, and lowers free-speech protection for expression that schools say implicates ‘characteristics of personal identity’ in an ‘assertedly demeaning’ way,” the lawsuit states.
The school's position butts heads with the Supreme Court’s famous 1969 decision, Tinker v. Des Moines, that permitted students to wear armbands protesting the Vietnam War, ruling they don’t “shed their constitutional rights” when they enter “the schoolhouse gate,” the suit contends.
The District Court disagreed, concluding that Tinker allows schools to restrict student expression that (1) materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or (2) invades the rights of others. The District Court then concluded that L. M.’s shirts ran afoul of Tinker’s “rights of others” limitation.
The First Circuit of Appeals affirmed the lower Court’s ruling, but for the justification mentioned in Tinker: speech that “materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder."
The court acknowledged that L. M.’s shirts - like the black armbands in Tinker - expressed his views “passively, silently, and without mentioning any specific students.” But the court saw a material difference between L. M.’s speech and that of the students in Tinker, in that L. M.’s expression - unlike the speech in Tinker - “demean[ed] characteristics of personal identity, such as race, sex, religion, or sexual orientation” that “other students at the school share.”
The majority of the Supreme Court declined to review the case.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, two of the court’s leading conservatives, indicated they would’ve reviewed the student’s case, saying the lower courts were distorting the First Amendment.
In his dissent, Justice Alito argued that the school's actions constituted viewpoint discrimination, stating, "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."
Justice Thomas joined in the dissent, called the case “an ideal vehicle” to address school censorship of student expression.
“The Court’s refusal to review this case is a troubling signal that core First Amendment protections may not extend to students expressing controversial viewpoints,” Alito wrote.
Thomas emphasized that the First Circuit's decision misapplied the standard set in Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, which protects student speech unless it causes substantial disruption. He noted, "Petitioner L.M. plainly did not create a 'material disruption' by wearing t-shirts reading 'There Are Only Two Genders.'"
The Court’s decision not to intervene means that schools can continue restricting student speech deemed offensive or disruptive, even where there is little evidence of actual disruption.
The decision has sparked discussions about the balance between school authority and student free speech rights, particularly concerning expressions of viewpoints that may be considered controversial or offensive by some.
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