Can a middle schooler wear a shirt that says “there are only two genders” to public school? That’s the question before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in L.M. v. Town of Middleborough on today after a federal district judge, Indira Talwani, ruled last year in favor of a public school that prohibited Liam Morrison, then 12, from wearing the shirt to his classes.

When school administrators at Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, saw the shirt, they took him out of class and told him to remove it. When he declined, they sent him home and he missed the rest of the school day. He then wore a shirt saying, in protest, “there are censored genders.” The school then told him he couldn’t wear that shirt. 

“School administrators were well within their discretion” to conclude that Mr. Morrison’s shirt “may communicate that only two gender identities — male and female — are valid, and any others are invalid or nonexistent, and to conclude that students who identify differently, whether they do so openly or not, have a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities,” Judge Talwani wrote in the district court ruling, citing the school’s dress code. 

“The takeaway from this case is whether or not schools can silence students just because of the viewpoint of their speech, and that’s a really big deal because the Supreme Court has held since 1969 in a case called Tinker [v. Des Moines] that students don’t shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” an attorney representing Mr. Morrison and legal counsel for Alliance Defending Freedom, Logan Spena, tells the Sun. “There needs to be something like material disruption of the school’s operation in order for the school to justify shutting down students’ speech.”

In Tinker, a court ruled that a public school in Iowa could not suspend students for wearing black armbands to protest the Vietnam War. If the First Circuit rules in favor of Mr. Morrison, it would be “good for students” regardless of their view on gender, sexual orientation, or religion, he says, noting that there’s nothing to suggest that respectfully and passively “expressing a viewpoint invades anybody else’s rights.”

Because the district court ruled in the school’s favor, it preserved the status quo, he adds, blocking Mr. Morrison from wearing the shirt while further litigation is pending.

“In his school, there’s a lot of discussion that’s already going on with regard to sex and gender. There’s pride flags that are displayed in the school, there’s posters that say things like ‘protect trans and GNC or gender nonconforming students’, the school has pride events and encourages other students to wear their pride gear to those events,” Mr. Spena says. “And so Liam wanted to express his own opinion on that set of topics.”

Despite the administration’s concerns, not a single student expressed to Mr. Morrison that they were uncomfortable with his shirt, and some even told him they liked it, Mr. Spena says. 

The school administration has raised concerns, cited in the district ruling, that several students at the school, including “members of the LGBTQ+ community” have attempted to commit suicide or have had suicidal thoughts, and that they “frequently cited LGBTQ+ status and treatment as a major factor.”

While there “unfortunately is some heightened suicidal ideation and suicide attempts by people that identify as transgender,” Mr. Spena responds, “there’s no evidence whatsoever that his speech actually contributes to any of that.” Despite bringing up the suicidal concerns, the school “did not provide any kind of evidence that would establish a connection between the speech that they’re targeting and any kind of mental health risk for students,” he adds. 

In a video posted on Alliance Defending Freedom’s website, Mr. Morrison says he believes there are only two sexes, male and female, and that gender has “everything to do with whether their sex is male or female.” 

“This view is backed up by science, and even though the administrators at my school would like me to think I’m alone in holding this view, I know I’m not,” he says. “Many of my classmates agree.” 

The Sun reached out to the school’s principal, Heather Tucker, who was not immediately reachable for comment.