Liam Morrison – Media Nation

Middleborough teen’s Supreme Court appeal over anti-trans T-shirt seems like a stretch

Liam Morrison. Handout photo via Nemasket Week.

You may have heard that Liam Morrison, the Middleborough teenager who has sued for the right to wear an anti-transgender T-shirt to school, has appealed his case to the U.S. Supreme Court.

I wouldn’t get too excited about it, at least not yet. It strikes me as highly unlikely that the court — even this court — will want to undo precedents holding that public school officials have broad powers to control their students’ communications, whether it be the right to censor the high school newspaper or, in this case, to decide that a T-shirt’s message creates a disciplinary problem.

At the heart of Morrison’s argument is a form of fake both-sides-ism — that is, pro-trans messages have been allowed in school, so why not anti-trans messages? The problem with this is obvious. Anti-trans messages express hatred toward kids who are LGBTQ, while pro-trans messages harm no one.

As Christopher Butler reported Wednesday for The Enterprise of Brockton, Morrison is being represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), described as a “Christian” law firm. (Scare quotes warranted given that there are many varieties of Christianity, some of which even take seriously Jesus’ admonition to love one another.) Sandy Quadros Bowles of Nemasket Week and Travis Andersen of The Boston Globe reported on the appeal as well.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, the ADF agenda includes “the recriminalization of sexual acts between consenting LGBTQ adults in the U.S.” The organization also supports sterilizing trans people in other countries, has linked LGBTQ people to pedophilia and has “claimed that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society,” the SPLC says.

Morrison, then a seventh-grader, was sent home from the Nichols Middle School twice in the spring of 2023 — the first time for wearing a T-shirt that read “There Are Only Two Genders” and, the second time, for amending that to “There Are (Censored) Genders.”

Morrison sued and lost in U.S. District Court, and his appeal was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. Chief Judge David Barron ruled that school officials did not act “unreasonably in concluding that the shirt would be understood … in this middle school setting … to demean the identity of transgender and gender nonconforming students.”

As for whether Morrison has a chance of riding his T-shirt to glory before the U.S. Supreme Court, as I said, it seems doubtful, but who knows with this group? It only takes four of the nine to agree to hear the case. And as Emily Birnbaum has reported for Bloomberg, the ADF “has won 15 Supreme Court Cases since 2011, and four since 2020, when Justice Amy Coney Barrett tilted the court into a 6-3 conservative supermajority.”

Still, it’s hard to imagine that the court is going to want to empower public school students to promote any message they want, especially if local school officials argue that to do so would be disruptive and create disciplinary problems. We’ll see.

Earlier coverage.

Appeals court rules that school officials had a right to ban anti-trans T-shirts

Not surprisingly, a federal appeals court has ruled against a Middleborough student who sued the school system after he was banned from wearing two T-shirts with anti-transgender messages.

According to an article by Sawyer Smook-Pollitt in Nemasket Week, Chief Judge David Barron, writing for the First Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that school officials did not act “unreasonably in concluding that the shirt would be understood … in this middle school setting … to demean the identity of transgender and gender nonconforming students.” John R. Ellement covered the story for The Boston Globe as well.

Earlier, Morrison lost in U.S. District Court. At this point, his only recourse would be an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. Given the high court’s lurch to the right, maybe his high-profile backers at the Massachusetts Family Institute, a religious-right organization, will give it a try.

As I’ve written previously, Liam Morrison, then a seventh-grader, was sent home from the Nichols Middle School twice in the spring of 2023 — the first time for wearing a T-shirt that read “There Are Only Two Genders” and, the second time, for amending that to “There Are (Censored) Genders.”

This was not an easy call. At root, the First Amendment exists to protect unpopular speech, and Morrison’s T-shirts were surely unpopular among his LGBTQ classmates and their allies. On balance, though, I think school officials and the courts have gotten it right.

As Judge Barron observes, the T-shirts’ message was demeaning to trans students and dismissive of their very identity. By contrast, if a student wore a pro-transgender T-shirt, that would not represent any sort of threat or insult to non-trans students. In addition, the courts have ruled repeatedly that public school students’ First Amendment rights are limited when they are on school property. The school handbook in Middleborough bans clothing that targets “groups based on race, ethnicity, gender identity, religious affiliation or any other classification.”

For all these reasons, I’ve refrained from giving a New England Muzzle Award to Middleborough school officials, even though Morrison and his family no doubt believe they’ve been muzzled.

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AG Campbell boosts free speech for electeds, while an anti-trans shirt goes to court

Attorney General Andrea Campbell. Photo (cc) 2022 by Dan Kennedy.

A past winner of a New England Muzzle Award is in the news, while a more ambiguous case is making its way through the federal courts.

First, Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Campbell recently issued guidance stating that local elected officials have no fear of violating the state’s open meeting law if they take part in re-election activities such as debates or candidate forums where they discuss pending municipal business. Campbell’s decision follows a ruling by our Muzzle winner, Waltham City Solicitor John Cervone, that such activities would be “potentially problematic,” raising the specter that officials running for re-election would be barred from any substantive discussion of local issues.

Campbell’s guidance was hailed in a Boston Globe editorial, which noted that a similar situation had arisen in Newton. The editorial observed that Campbell gave her blessing even to situations at which a quorum of officials are present (for instance, three members of a five-member selectboard) “as long as they address their answers to the public, not to each other.” Campbell’s guidance reads in part:

The Open Meeting Law does not restrict an individual’s right to make comments to the general public, particularly as a candidate for office. Rather, it restricts communication between or among a quorum of a public body outside of a meeting; thus, the intent of the public official is an important consideration.

The Waltham and Newton restrictions were absurd, and Campbell was right to set them aside.

Second, Liam Morrison of Middleborough, Massachusetts, who as a seventh-grade student last year was banned from wearing an anti-transgender T-shirt to school, has taken his case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit after losing his bid to overturn the ban in federal district court. Morrison wore a shirt that said “There Are Only Two Genders.” And when that didn’t pass muster, he returned to school with a T-shirt that said “There Are [Censored] Genders.” That earned him a trip back home as well.

According to a report by Reuters, the appeals court seemed unimpressed with Morrison’s free speech argument at a recent hearing. Here’s part of the Reuters article:

U.S. Circuit Judge Lara Montecalvo contrasted the shirt with a brochure handed out by students expressing a particular message, saying unlike those pieces of paper, a student could not throw away the shirt that Morrison was wearing.

“A T-shirt that is worn all day is worn all day,” she said. “You have to look at it, you have to read it.”

Deborah Ecker, a lawyer for the Middleborough School Committee, said the school officials’ actions were motivated by concern for the mental health of LGBTQ students, “who are captive in this classroom looking at it.”

Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby sides firmly with Morrison, writing:

In court filings, Middleborough’s lawyers argue that the school was entitled to suppress Morrison’s message out of concern that it could have led to “disruption.” Yet contrary messages are permitted. No discipline was imposed when a student came to class in a “He she they, it’s all okay” T-shirt. School administrators cannot have it both ways, allowing students to express the popular side of a debatable issue but silencing those who disagree because their opinion might provoke an angry reaction. The First Amendment does not bow to the heckler’s veto.

My own opinion is that this is not as simple as Jacoby makes it seem. As Jacoby himself notes, public school students have limited free speech rights when they are on school grounds. And though there’s a certain logic to the either/or choice Jacoby presents, it doesn’t hold up to closer scrutiny. An anti-LGBTQ message expresses animosity toward specific people, including fellow students whose orientation is something other than he or she. A pro-LGBTQ message affirms everyone’s humanity without — and this is the key — expressing any animosity toward people like Morrison who hold a different viewpoint.

Given that difference, it seems to me that Middleborough school officials got it right. Based on the Reuters report, it sounds like the appeals court is likely to agree when it issues its ruling.

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