First Circuit Court of Appeals Upholds School ‘There are Only Two Genders’ Shirt Ban
Feels are more important than the First Amendment.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit upheld a middle school ban of the “There are Only Two Genders” t-shirt because words are violence!
The First Circuit is as leftist as the Ninth Circuit. It has all Obama and Biden nominees.
In March 2023, the Nicholas Middle School in Middleborough, MA, told seventh-grade student Liam Morrison to change his “There are Only Two Genders” t-shirt or leave school.
Morrison wore it again, but put masking tape over “two genders” and wrote “CENSORED.” This time he agreed to wear a different shirt.
(This kid is AMAZING)
Morrison, with the help of his parents and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a lawsuit against the school and city, claiming administrators violated his First Amendment.
The school argued the t-shirt “would cause disruption and invade other students’ rights.”
The United States District Court of Massachusetts ruled in the school and city’s favor.
Judge Indira Talwani wrote: “School administrators were well within their discretion to conclude that the statement ‘there are only two genders’ 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.”
Morrison and ADF filed an appeal to the First Circuit.
Judge David Barron, an Obama appointee, emphasized two parts of the school’s handbook:
- Clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target[s] groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.
- Any other apparel that the administration determines to be unacceptable to our community standards will not be allowed.
You also knew the case would go downhill because Barron then wrote (emphasis mine), “In the Spring of 2023, L.M. was a seventh grader at NMS. He held the belief that there are only two biological sexes (male and female), that the word ‘gender’ is synonymous with ‘sex[,]’ and that because there are only two biological sexes, there are only two genders.”
Well, guess what! The world has equated the two now so, yeah, Morrison is correct! (Even though I would have put sexes instead of gender on the t-shirt. Not like the school would have cared.)
Anyway!
I noticed the First Circuit latching onto the times when Morrison admitted or did not dispute anything similar to the defense, using it as an excuse to say the school did not violate the First Amendment.
For example. At the District Court hearing, Morrison claimed the t-shirt does not demean “anyone’s gender identity.” He admitted the message is “purely ideological” of his beliefs. It does not criticize other points of view. The message is not hatred or bigoted nor does it target those with opposing views.
But then Morrison did not dispute that the shirt’s message “expresses the view that students with different ‘beliefs about the nature of [their] existence’ are wrong.”
Barron then wrote:
Consistent with that acknowledgement, the District Court determined the message is reasonably understood to be an assertion, however sincerely believed, that individuals who do not identify as either male or female have no gender with which they may identify, as male and female are their only options. As the District Court put it, the message “may communicate that only two gender identities — male and female — are valid, and any others are invalid or nonexistent.”
We agree with the District Court and so cannot say the message, on its face, shows Middleborough acted unreasonably in concluding that the Shirt would be understood — in this middleschool setting in which the children range from ten-to-fourteen years old — to demean the identity of transgender and gendernonconforming NMS students.
“We also note that Middleborough interpreted the message in applying a dress code and thus in the context of assessing a particular means of expression that is neither fleeting nor admits of nuance,” added Barron. “As a result, Middleborough’s assessment of the message’s demeaning character does not necessarily reflect a categorical judgment that, whenever uttered, the message has such a character. So understood, we see no basis for substituting our judgment for Middleborough’s as to whether the Shirt demeaned the gender identities of other students at NMS.”
How about when Morrison taped the shirt?
“The Taped Shirt did cover “Only Two” with the word “CENSORED,” which raises a question as to whether it conveyed a less negative message than the Shirt,” wrote Barron. “But the Taped Shirt was the same shirt and thus, aside from the taping, looked the same.”
Morrison also brought up the term “hate speech.” His lawsuit is correct. Hate speech is not a legal term.
Of course, the First Circuit disagrees.
“The word ‘hate’ in ‘hate speech’ also indicates that the provision refers only to speech that provokes ‘such strong feelings that a serious possibility of disruption might be inferred,” noted Barron.
Um, okay.
Overall, though, the First Circuit leaves speech issues to school administrators:
We close by emphasizing a point that may be obvious but should not be overlooked. The question here is not whether the t-shirts should have been barred. The question is who should decide whether to bar them — educators or federal judges. Based on Tinker, the cases applying it, and the specific record here, we cannot say that in this instance the Constitution assigns the sensitive (and potentially consequential) judgment about what would make “an environment conducive to learning” at NMS to us rather than to the educators closest to the scene.
Cowards. Instead of actually doing their jobs, the Court defers it back to the school.
Our Founding Fathers instilled the First Amendment to protect all speech. At the time of writing the Constitution, all of them could be jailed for saying anything negative against the monarchy. Questioning the monarchy? Oh, boy. That would turn heads and could be used against you.
The way the courts are going, someone will make “hate speech” a legal term, but keep it vague on purpose. That way, people can strike down anyone with dissenting or politically incorrect views.
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Comments
Just don’t talk smack about Israel
?
Ten thousand marches against Israel and Jews have taken place, the authorities did nothing about them. Many schools encouraged and organized their own.
Try to keep up, antisemite
Don’t call for the death of Jews, moron.
Indira Talwani?
His next shirt should ask “Are you an innie or an outie?”
McLoven
Clowns … Completely un-American morons. That is what our courts and institutions are infested with.
There is no solving this problem. You cannot deal rationally with people who think you can switch genders on a whim and everyone in the world has to prostrate himself in fealty to your demented notions. The fact that any adult would even entertain these insane ideas, let alone sanction sane people who mock them, tells us how sick this society is.
The only real solution is to have a national divorce, eventually, and be rid of these perverted lunatics. There is no other way. They are sick people – the sickest people ever puked onto the Earth by the trial and error of evolution.
“There is no solving this problem.”
Is the senate a joke to you?
Is use of the DOE the same way the Democrats try to use to pressure red states not give you any ideas for how to deal with MA?
We have tools the only question is do we use them.
You cannot salvage a society when you have more than 10% of it being deranged, nihilistic lunatics, and we have a much larger percentage of sick nihilists than that.
There are limits to what a civil society can bear and modern American society is well over them in many aspects. This is a sick society with a large percentage of it who seek its demise. Anyone tied to these people will be dragged down into the abyss with them.
So you are saying changing the education system won’t do anything?
That is a relief I must have imagined the results of the left taking over the education system.
Change the education system and you change the trajectory of the nation.
You’re a dreamer.
Our problems are much, much deeper than altering this institution or that. Yes, the education system needs to be totally changed but that is not going to save this society.
You cannot put a band-aid on cancer.
Education via government bureaucracy was always a disaster, whoever was in control. It is a perfect vehicle for the left. It cannot be redeemed. It must be abolished. It is un-American.
If by ‘change the educational system’ you mean withdraw all Federal funding and all State funding then maybe. That way the only tax $ going to the school district would be paid within the district… and consequently the Parents and other Citizens within that district would have a far greater incentive to vote in School Board elections and attend school board meetings to voice their stance on this and other issues.
Couple that with real school choice so that 85% of the per capita amount of education spending in the district would follow the student to an alternative educational program and suddenly the School Board would have a huge incentive to develop policies embraced by the Citizens of the school district and especially the Parents.
CommoChief, School districts use the tactic of holding programs parents and their children like – such as sports, music. art, shop, etc. – unless the parents approve the budget. Even if you can get reasonable people elected to the school board, the other side (which doesn’t consider them “reasonable”) will do anything to replace them in the next election. It’s like tying parents’ tails together and throwing them over a clothesline. It’s a “winner takes all” situation, with a high probability that this election’s winner will be next election’s loser.
In other words, it’s a government solution.
gibbie
Yes the School Boards do tend to do that. However that’s back to the level of voter participation in school board elections and meetings. Voters can’t simply vote in a majority, get their favored policies implemented then walk away and stop paying attention, stop attending meetings and stop voting in school board elections while expecting those policies to remain in place.
Removing all tax funding from out of district sources makes the locals more likely to pay far greater attention. Forcing a $ follows student choice plan adds to the accountability of the school district to Parents and provides a credible way for Parents to choose and fund an alternative form of education that better fits their child’s needs.
Won’t solve all the problems in every district but this plan forces local taxpayers to foot 100% of the bill for their folly in allowing a Cray Cray school board to enable woke/lefty teachers and admin. Gives responsible Parents a viable escape option as well.
Unfortunately I don’t see a widespread appetite to do away with govt schools. Too many people have bought into the idea that public funding of education = public schools or that ‘this is the we always did it’ and we can’t or must not make a drastic change.
CommoChief, It’s true that voters can’t go to sleep after they win. But that isn’t my point. The current government school system is designed in such a way that some parents will always be profoundly unhappy, resulting in pitched battles.
An example is “ability tracking”. Some parents believe it’s fundamental to the success of their children. Some parents believe it’s disastrous for their children. Both groups have very good arguments. Since the government school is The One Best System, one or other of these two groups will lose.
School choice via vouchers or Educational Savings Accounts address this issue, provide competition and accountability, and are likely to destroy the corrupt teachers unions. The only problem is that wherever government money is involved there is the danger of government control. But that is already true of the existing government school system.
How does your plan eliminate the teachers unions?
gibbie
My plan provides Parents the option to take their Student to any alternative educational program and very importantly bring 85% of the per Student spending with them to fund that choice. This puts Parent’s into the driver seat.
By removing State and Federal funding and limiting public finances to those of taxpayers of the School District it:
1. Provides clear incentive, an imperative in fact, for Parents and Citizens to pay far more attention to WTF their local School Board is up to.
2. Removes the lobbying power on Congress and State Legislatures, President and Governors to send more $ ‘for the children’ b/c it prohibits those sources of public finance.
Let the woke weirdo/commie teacher unions wither on the vine as Parents remove their children for alternatives. The attrition of Student enrollment will collapse the need for current # of public school (govt school) employees of all kinds, not just teachers.
IMO of a bunch of woke weirdo commie teachers want to send dues to an ineffective union….fools do foolish things. Don’t get in the way of their internal folly.
Not to mention that the increased competition will create an irresistible incentive to provide a much better educational product in the public (gov’t) schools. When the gravy train get cut off and they must compete or die they either deliver much improved results (probably by firing the weirdo ideologues and replacing them with competent non ideological folks) or they shrink in size to near irrelevance or go out of business altogether.
CommoChief, Ah! I missed the “$ follows student choice plan” part. I should read more carefully.
Your plan keeps the decision making closer to the people than a state-wide school choice plan would. I suppose that a hostile takeover of a local school board MAY be less likely than a hostile takeover of a state legislature. But I’m not sure.
A statewide plan has the advantage of leveling the playing field. As Elizabeth Warren (yes! her!) pointed out in her book, “The Two-Income Trap” (which she seems to have forgotten about), income disparities between school districts lead to bidding wars among parents for homes in the better funded districts, thus jacking up housing prices. This is not a Good Thing.
Well, there are pros and cons to any idea. The lowest level issue is that parents MUST take responsibility for the raising of their children. They cannot continue to outsource this to government bureaucracies.
Thanks for your (as always) thoughtful comments!
gibbie,
I enjoyed the discussion. Honestly the best path is getting the govt out of the equation if possible. Bureaucrats are human with all our innate flaws. Over time every bureaucracy morphs from its original mission to one of growing and maintaining the size, scope, power and revenue stream of the bureaucracy. Not b/c they are ‘evil’ but b/c they are human.
As the dull drones take over an organization those able to to think outside the box become a liability to the dull drones who can only ‘paint by numbers’. The original thinkers able to produce unique artwork make them jealous and out of resentment or anger they are driven out. The level of efficiency/service declines. More hive minded drones are hired and ….here we are with K-12 in many places.
ThePrimordialOrderedPair – There’s a method to the madness. The point of all of this is insanity and dissention is to bring about the destruction of our social order. Once there is total Chaos, it can be rebuilt any way those with the power want it to be rebuilt – The US will look more like the EU when they have their way. There will be no Freedom of Speech, There will be no Right to Keep and Bear Arms, we will be Subjects, not Citizens.
Absolutely. Especially with McConnell still at the head. He has been a complete failure over and over and over but he won’t step down from the leadership and the idiot Senate GOP won’t elect someone else. It’s crazy, really.
How is he supposed to block nominees without a majority?
You seem to forget that when he had a majority during Obama Obama succeeded in getting ZERO nominees through.
LOL.
You think that that is where McConnell fails?? Where have you been for the last … uh … 18 years??
McConnell has been a failure over and over. He has sided with the dems more times than I can count. His reaction to the Tea Party giving the GOP the most massive swing in power in Congress in 2010 for more than a hundred years to be that his primary duty was to crush the Tea Party. McConnell has been retarded slime for a very long time and he has caused more damage to the GOP than almost anyone else (though a few GOP House Speakers are in the running).
The GOP in the Senate has been, by and large over the past 15 years, absolute dogsh*t.
But none of that has anything to do with the fact that America cannot survive with the current population, being infested with more than 35% of self-hating, nihilistic, anti-America, anti-human lunatics. We must eventually break off from them. They are death.
Before you bash McConnell – The last time the republicans had a majority in the senate and had an opening for a new judge in CA1 was 2002. Basically, 22 years without any opportunity for a republican president to nominate a judge and 22 years when an opening occurred in which the republicans controlled the senate.
Not a single opening occurred in CA1 during the trump administration.
https://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/judges.
Joe Dallas
Ok fair enough. However only the SCOTUS is Constitutionally mandated and can always be terminated. If a POTUS had a like minded Congressional Majority they ask Congress to pass a simple bill that eliminated all inferior Courts (the District Courts and Circuit Courts of Appeal).
Set it to occur at one minute before midnight with companion legislation for a reauthorization of the inferior Courts the next day. Then the Congress would have handed the POTUS the nomination for every newly created Judicial vacancy.
Political upheaval? Sure. Lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth? Yep. Doesn’t make it unconstitutional though. The inferior Federal Courts are a creation of Congress. What Congress creates it can rescind. No amendments needed.
CommoChief, that doesn’t work, because once an inferior court judge is appointed he is entitled to independence, i.e. life tenure subject only to good behavior (which can’t be based on the decisions he makes), and no reduction in salary.
A court could be abolished if it’s truly not needed; but reestablishing it the next day with new judges would put the lie to that. The courts would reject such a measure as violating the constitution’s guarantee of judicial independence.
Milhouse,
Not when they have to file in front of newly nominated /approved Judges who grant motion to dismiss at trial level and confirm on appeal.
Only SCOTUS is ‘independent’ in that it is mandated by the Constitution. Inferior Courts are a creation of Congress. They obviously have the power to expand, diminish the number of judges and shape of Circuits.
Pay them their salary but put the lefty wokiesta weirdo judges out the door with their pseudo life pension. Receiving wages doesn’t entitle them to remain on the bench.
1. This is literally a JUDGE story you know JUDGES who are confirmed only by SENATE. You are still clinging to “We got the congress in 2010 that should have been enough with the Democrats holding the senate and presidency”???? This story if you think it is significantly has killed that perspective. The senate is important.
2. McConnell stopped everything Obama did in terms of judges and legislation as soon as he had the senate which is when that was possible.
3. No Republican voted for Obamacare and Obama never achieved anything else through congress except for judges which was something outside of McConnell’s ability to stop him.
4. Children are shaped by their education system.
5. Less surrender more ideas for what to do next. A focus on K-12 is a good start for example. Regulating industry to stop racial preferences another. Regulating businesses to stop their maoist struggle sessions seems like a great one. Whining that surrendering everything that existed to the left on behalf of libertarian shrink the government principles resulted in the left taking over education and indoctrinating young Americans is not helpful unless you have some sort of idea for how you are going to turn it around.
Doesn’t the Constitution already address the elements you seek to regulate? If not please explain precisely why the Constitution itself provides an insufficient barrier that mere regulation will somehow achieve.
The constitution doesn’t regulate industry or business, or private schools. And it doesn’t forbid the sort of indoctrination at government schools that produces absurd and unconstitutional results like this; it only forbids the actual results, not the process that produces them.
@Commo
Constitution needs enforcing mechanisms in the form of actual laws passed that could be acted on.
A State Attorney General can’t order a business not to enforce racial preferences because equality is enshrined in the constitution there has to be an additional law for him to act on.
Furthermore when such laws exist they should be expanded to operate in modern times.
@Milhouse
Founding fathers regulated behavior all the time from deciding how women and girls could dress, to deciding what the line between free speech and obscenity was, some states even had established religion which the constitution did not abolish and had to be done away with on a state level.
What the constitution requires vs allows are separate and unrelated. Speech was very much regulated by the government by the people of the people for the people in the time of the founding fathers.
The idea that schools and businesses can’t be regulated to protect employees is alien to the constitution of the United States.
As I said before as long as it is lawful and within the U.S. Constitution I really don’t give a dam what size the government is. DeSantis has shown us the way forward and it is not further surrender of this country to the left.
Danny,
While I appreciate A response you didn’t answer as to what specific defect exists in the existing Constitution. Instead you dropped the ‘regulation’ proposal and replaced it with ‘laws’.
Laws and regulations are two different things. Secondly your suggestion falls victim to the willingness to enforce it. That’s the real issue. The US Constitution is incredibly clear. It assigns enumerated powers to the three branches of the Federal Govt and explicitly reserves the jurisdiction/power over ALL other non enumerated subjects to the individual Sovereign States or to the Citizens aka the People. Many will assert that the 9th/10th amendments are ‘dead letter’. That is not true b/c a Constitutional provision can’t be rendered moot unless repealed with another Constitutional amendment.
It is definitely true that both the 9th/10th amendments are routinely ignored by those who seek ever expanding government to intrude into nearly every aspect of our lives. It takes a willingness to enforce the simple prohibitions on ever expanding govt the Constitution already provides (despite the many machinations of Judicial ideologues who substituted their opinion for plain text) ….just as would be case for a stature or a mere regulation. The will to act is the key.
McConnell did more than any other Republican Senator to get conservative, Federalist Society judges on the bench than any other Senator ever has. The Dems and the Left were so focused on attacking Trump, that they never paid attention to what he was doing. McConnell fundamentally changed the Federal Courts. Regrettably, Trump wasted all of this by telling Georgia Republicans not to vote in the Senate election because it was rigged, So instead of continuing the movement of the federal judiciary to strict constructionists like Scalia, we end up with Biden negating everything that McConnell did. I blame this 100% on Trump.
“Is the senate a joke to you?”
Yes, as it should be a joke to you.
One major nitpick
“Our Founding Fathers instilled the First Amendment to protect all speech. At the time of writing the Constitution, all of them could be jailed for saying anything negative against the monarchy. Questioning the monarchy? Oh, boy. That would turn heads and could be used against you.”
No they intended on protecting your political speech, obscenity was in no way covered by the 1st amendment.
Even in the realm of political speech burning the American Flag became legal in 1989.
The founding fathers would be appalled by this decision because of the speech being censored, and because of the principle of “hate speech” being established, and establishing universities and “experts” as the people who will decide when speech crosses the line instead of the government of the people, by the people for the people not because they had a free speech absolutist ideology (they very clearly and overtly did not).
There is a reason nobody has ever wrote in a supreme court case “you must find this censorship illegal because the founding fathers intended all speech to be protected speech”.
Obscenity was to be governed by state law; a federal obscenity law would have been unconstitutional. It’s only the 14th amendment that made an “obscenity exception” necessary.
Flag-burning did not “become legal” in 1989. The decision in 1989 found that the first amendment had always prohibited laws against flag-burning, so such laws had always been unconstitutional. And the framers and ratifiers of the first amendment would have agreed 100% (though they would have limited it to federal law, since the 14th amendment had not yet been made).
Some of the founding fathers had already been and some would go on to be governors of their states. New York for example had a founding father as a governor early on, and it was not the only example. The burning of the American flag was without doubt legalized 1989. The state of Texas or any other state convicting you of a crime makes you as much of a felon as if the U.S. Federal Government did it.
The Founding Fathers would be outraged by the verdict but not because they believed in free speech absolutism. If they had they would have imposed free speech absolutism in their own time.
Lets not forget there is a wide variety of cultural speech to. Would the young women and girls you see in short skirts and shirts that bare their midriff have been allowed to dress like that in New York 1803? Understanding where the founding fathers permitted speech regulation and why is the key to understanding how to fight modern leftist speech regulation.
Nobody has ever or will ever argue that the first amendment protects everything because it doesn’t, and didn’t when a founding father was governor of New York.
By the way if you disagree with me just provide me the case number and name for when the Supreme Court overturned the Miller test.
Arguing that the left can’t touch speech because the constitution is free speech absolutist is at best a fantasy.
Kids should wear shirts with the following vague letters on them — TRUMP. Nothing more, nothing less. Wonder how our right think authorities would handle that dilemma.
I wonder if he wore a T-shirt with this: “”I bear witness that there is no deity but God, and I bear witness that Muhammad is the Messenger of God.”
To ask the question is to answer it. You know how leftist judges would rule.
“The First Circuit is as leftist as the Ninth Circuit. It has all Obama and Biden nominees.”
And this court sits right in downtown Boston.
My head shakes and shakes in disbelief that Massachusetts was one of the original Thirteen.
I consider Massachusetts a vanguard state, simply out of phase with the rest.
It was ahead of the crowd in the 18th century rush towards freedom.
It is now ahead of the crowd in the 21st century rush back to autocracy.
He can proclaim the same message with fewer words.
Math: XY=M XX=F
I believe that courts ruled long time ago before this case, that public schools have wide leeway to do what they want on this issue. The teacher / principal can demand any student change their clothing if its considered “disruptive” to the classroom environment. Its wide open for the school to determine what is considered disruptive. The best chance to prevail for this student might have been to say that the shirt message reflects his religious beliefs, and his civil rights have been violated. In any case the words are clearly not violence, that’s junk ruling.
if the school banned all shirts on gender identity (which they would never do), perhaps.
Here we have the school censoring content-specific speech. That is unconstitutional.
You’ve got your terms mixed up. A ban on all shirts on the topic of gender would not be content-neutral, but it would be viewpoint-neutral. In traditional public forums the government is required to be content-neutral; in limited public forums the government is not required to content-neutral, but it is required to be viewpoint-neutral. The wearing of shirts in school is somewhere between the two, but more like a limited forum than a traditional one.
The words are clearly not “violence”. It the ruling was based on that, it should be considered ruling in error.
Science and biology are just so hard to understand.
But yet, that’s a very basic piece of knowledge- there are two genders. Period. End of discussion.
And the schools that are supposed to be teaching knowledge and the courts that are supposed to render decisions based on facts find this too hard to understand.
If everybody wore robes, had long hair and wore no make up like they did in Bible days, there wouldn’t be much incentive to be a cross dresser. Fetishism is the root cause of most of the so-called gender dysphoria.
Men’s and women’s clothing in Biblical days were very different. Different enough that the Bible found it necessary to ban cross-dressing.
he made a huge mistake by not having the shirt read
BLM says there are only 2 genders
Can LI suggest that parents remove their children from the government schools yet?
removing them is not enough
THE MONEY HAS TO STOP FLOWING to gov schools
they dont care if you take your kid out they will get subsidized
but stop all tax money….VICTORY!!!
They are paid by the student… I like your message though.
The workaround is to wear a t-shirt reading, “My preferred pronoun is: There-are-only-two-genders.”
You can be sure that if he had worn a t-shirt depicting the pride flag, or the words “God is Dead”, there would have been no problem at all. We are in a very dangerous place. We are only two Supreme Court justices away from a judiciary totally dominated by judges like those on the First and Ninth circuit.
“….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.”
Where is this kind of logic when it comes to White People or Jews?
Judge Indira Talwani
Nominated by Barack Obama on September 24, 2013, to a seat vacated by Mark L. Wolf; Confirmed by the Senate on May 8, 2014, and received commission on May 12, 2014.
Education
Harvard / Radcliffe College, B.A., 1982
University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, J.D., 1988
No surprises here.
Feels are more important than the First Amendment.
It’s more about “our religion is more important than anyone else’s”.
Clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech
Those last two words are where the camel’s nose enters the tent. “Hate speech” is a Progressive way to “morally” restrict your speech.
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
And right there, you see – again – the insertion of Progressive religious dogma (“identities”) into the construct of Christian (Western Civilization) law. What forms the basis of your law and your worldview really does make a difference.
“School administrators were well within their discretion to conclude that the statement ‘there are only two genders’ may communicate that only two gender identities–male and female–are valid,”
Well they are, so…
RE: court’s statement:
Clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target[s] groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.
The t-shirt omitted any reference to the items listed above.
I suspect that members of the protected group wear items that proclaim the classification is best and omit any reference to normal persons.
For the schools policy to be equally enforced all references should be banned to protect everyone’s feelings!
I’m aligned with the second bullet from the handbook and support the school admin in shutting down disruption. Unfortunately, we all know that discretion is applied in one direction and all the BLM, LGBQT stuff is A-OK at this and every other work school district.
Pinkos.
So, the school didn’t like this kid’s t-shirt because the message on it reflected a truth (there are two and only two biological genders or sexes). They banned the wearing of that shirt on the grounds that it “would cause disruption and invade other students’ rights.”
In the first place, which is more disruptive, the message on this t-shirt or the reaction of the administrators losing their minds over it?
Secondly, whose non-existent right to not be offended was invaded? Was it students or those administrators championing the rainbow QWERTY agenda?
So-called offensive speech, especially when that speech reflects a truth is not criminal and certainly not an expression of “hate.” If someone takes exception to the expression of that truth (or view or opinion), that is their problem and should not be used as a cudgel to beat the speaker into either agreement or silence
The concept that someone’s fundamental right to free speech can or should be subordinated to someone else’s claimed “right” to not be offended is offensive to me.
I am pretty sure that I learned in Latin class that there are three genders. Only two sexes of course, and you needn’t call them biological sexes.
I wish that conservatives would not obediently adopt the terminology demanded by the left. It concedes far too much.
Totally agree.
We look stupid when we do this, and miss the better argument.
Yes, the 1st Circuit and the 9th Circuit super-legislatures in competition with each other for the annual Most-Woke award.
I wonder how these judges would distinguish this kid’s shirt from “Fuck the Draft”.
This is on Roberts for not controlling his courts.
Why Are You Still Sending Your Kids to School?: The Case for Helping Them Leave, Chart Their Own Paths, and Prepare for Adulthood
Author: Blake Boles
Year: 2020
The Case Against Education: Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money
Author: Bryan Caplan
Year: 2018
The Teenage Liberation Handbook (Third Edition): How to Quit School and Get a Real Life and Education
Author: Grace Llewelyn
Year: 2021
Inside American Education: The Decline, The Deception, The Dogmas
Author: Thomas Sowell, PhD
Year: 1992
There are three genders. Masculine, feminine, neuter. Gender applies to LANGUAGE.
There are two SEXES.
Using “gender” to mean sex is improper usage.
Bravo! Thank you. Missed your comment before submitting mine.
“Gender” is ternary, not binary.
Then there was the CA student who was kicked out of class for wearing US flag t-shirt on Cinco de Mayo. He eventually prevailed after public outcry.
That is, first circuit adopts “Official State Policy” to crush this student’s free speech rights.
Conservatives will contnue to lose these kinds of cases, and look really ignorant as long as they keep using the word “gender” as if it’s a synonym for “sex”. It is not!!!!!!!
There are THREE genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.
And people don’t have genders. People have “sexes”. Only words and things have genders.
It is embarassing to see such stupid lawyering, as well as the apparent refusal of conservatives to understand how the have been confused and hoodwinked by the Victorianish squeamishness to use the word “sex” appropriately, and, consequently miss the winning arguments against this crap.
Coming soon to the Supreme Court.