Last October, I wrote that I would be surprised if the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear a middle school student’s appeal of a ruling that local officials had a right to ban him from wearing an anti-transgender T-shirt. But the way this court is heading, I have to say that maybe I am a little surprised.
The court declined to hear the case, reports Lawrence Hurley for NBC News. That should be the end of the line for Liam Morrison, who in the spring of 2023 — when he was a seventh-grader — was sent home from school by authorities in Middleborough, Massachusetts, for wearing a T-shirt that said “There Are Only Two Genders” and then again for wearing a shirt that said “There Are Only (Censored) Genders.”
Here is the post I wrote last October, when he and his high-profile supporters appealed to the court. It’s got all the background that you need. Meanwhile, let me explain how close a call this is.
About a month ago, the court ruled against an online Catholic school in Missouri that sought to become the country’s first religious charter school — that is, a public school. As Amy Howe reported for SCOTUSblog, the vote was 4-4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett recusing herself. If Barrett had taken part and voted with the majority, the Catholic school would have won.
Likewise, Morrison’s case has been cloaked in the garb of religious freedom, and he was being represented by a Christian-right law firm. It only takes four justices to agree to hear a case, a process known as granting a writ of certiorari, or “granting cert.”
Thus all it would have taken to get Morrison’s case before the court was the support of the same four justices who ruled in favor of the Catholic school in the Missouri case. As for whether Morrison could have won, Barrett herself has some pretty strong ties to the religious right, though she’s also emerged as something of an independent thinker.
What that suggests is that Morrison’s case was exceptionally weak, and the Supreme Court has no interest in overturning precedents leaving disciplinary decisions in the hands of public school authorities.
More: I initially failed to note that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito said they would have heard the case. Because of course they would.
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Allowing public schools to violate the First Amendment rights of their students has long been based on only one thing: that certain speech is so disruptive in the educational environment that it distracts from learning. This is left to the judgment of school officials because they supposedly are the experts. Well, the overwhelming majority of school officials seem to be Nervous Nellies who over-react to most everything. And courts rarely to never cite real incidents in which a T-shirt or a student newspaper story actually disrupted learning. Courts never entertain the possibility that school officials’ judgments would often or usually be incorrect as they are made on a knee-jerk basis about largely apathetic students.