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

Non-disruptive student expressions of protest, ideology and humor will be wiped out in public schools if the Supreme Court does not rebuke a federal appeals court that upheld bans on “degrading message(s)” that could “poison” the school environment, free speech, religious freedom, conservative and pro -life groups told the Supreme Court in friend-of-the-court briefs.

They were joined in their support of censured Massachusetts student Liam Morrison by the Republican attorney generals of South Carolina, West Virginia and 16 other states, as well as by a Colorado student who last year was banned from carrying a backpack with Gadsden’s flag—a supposed symbol of the “slave trade”—until his governor intervened.

The 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Middleborough Public Schools’ ban on Morrison wearing the bisexual shirt to protest its encouragement of students to express LGBTQ messages, then another that replaced “only two” with “censored” after the first ban.

All nominated by Democratic presidents, the three-judge panel narrowly interpreted the landmark SCOTUS precedent Tinkerwhich upheld the right of students to wear anti-war armbands at school, as it does not cover expression that “allegedly denigrates qualities of personal identity”, even if it is done “passively, silently and without naming any specific students”.

Restrictions on gender identity protests are also current in one recent lawsuit against a school district in New Hampshirewhich is part of the Boston-based 1st Circuit, which banned attendees at girls’ high school soccer games from wearing “XX” armbands to protest men’s eligibility to play.

The Cincinnati-based 6th Circuit, which covers Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio and Tennessee, could provide the impetus for SCOTUS involvement through a contrary decision to the 1st Circuit.

The The full Court of Appeals voted on November 1 to hear 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 a split three-judge panel declined to block this summer.

The The 6th Circuit already banned Ohio’s Shawnee State University from punishing a professor refused to call a student by preferred pronouns, followed by a solid deal.

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

“At the same time, (Middleborough) advocates the assumption that the same children are fully capable of deciding for themselves” to engage in “life-changing” medical interventions, their brief says, that children cannot be both mature enough to choose so-called gender-affirming care and so immature that they cannot hear disagreement about gender identity.

“Schools around the country have used these speech codes to censor speech on one side of the issue,” wrote Parents defending educationplaintiff in the Olentangy lawsuit.

It noted that courts found 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 song— now on the 6th Circuit – and a California district punishes a first grader for giving a black classmate a drawing that said ‘any life matters’, as of last week pending oral argument at the 9th Circuit.

Middleborough “allowed – indeed encouraged – speech supporting the idea that there are more than two sexes” while banning Morrison’s contrary view, the PDE said. “That error alone warrants this court’s review (and reversal).”

With the repeal of federal abortion rights and the return of the issue to the states, “the need to protect the ability of pro-life citizens to exercise their First Amendment rights to persuade their fellow citizens,” including in schools, “has taken on a new urgency,” he wrote 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 because it must “remain neutral on controversial topics” like biology, but at the same time allows teachers to violate district policy by hanging “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 subjecting YAF alone to speech-related pre-approval requirements until “legal counsel intervened.” the groups also wrote.

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

The Republican AG’s cardwhich mostly represents the South, Midwest and Mountain West, argues that the ruling “undercuts one of the most important purposes of public education: to form civic virtues through the pursuit of truth — even when it’s inconvenient.”

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

The Tinker siblings wore antiwar bracelets when “the national temperature of the Vietnam War had reached a boiling point,” and their Iowa school district treated them as an unacceptable distraction from class work that also caused “emotional distress” by reminding children of “the wounded and the dead” who where their neighbors were, it says in the cards.

“In the midst of this bitter, explosive and disturbing debate” over gender identity, SCOTUS demanded “evidence of a major disturbance before police speech” and ordered judges to “not just rubber-stamp school decisions, but to carefully balance order and civic virtue.” said the AGs.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression echoed the AGs by deeming student freedom “essential to public education” because, as Tinker the court said, students must “live in this relatively permissive, often contentious, society.”

Schools are prone to “censor broad swaths of controversial issues of public debate and disagreement” because of “the push and pull of the culture wars in our society” but “must prepare students to learn the values ​​of tolerance and civil debate,” FIRE said, and noting that SCOTUS upheld this just three years ago in Mahanoy profane cheerleader case.

The 1st Circuit “fundamentally redefines the concept of substantial interference” by speculating that speech can cause “subjectively harmful psychological effects” and even contradicts its own 2020’s precedent that “the speech must be directed at another student” before officials can overrule it as an “invasion of the rights of others” according to Tinkersaid the free speech group.

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

He and the Claremont Institute Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, which supports his First Lawsuit Against Harrison School District 2reminded SCOTUS that the justices themselves recognized “there are actually only two sexes” in the Bostock transgender employment discrimination precedent.

Absent the requisite substantial disruption, “if a listening student experiences mental distress when exposed to speech on a matter of public interest,” the school has a duty to “Help that the student develops resilience and a sense of self-worth that comes with responding to and attempting to refute the unpleasant speech,” their brief states.

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