The town of Middleborough, the previous acting school principal Heather Tucker, the Middleborough School Committee, and Middleborough Public Schools superintendent Carolyn J. Lyons faced a federal free speech lawsuit filed by his parents.
In June, a federal judge upheld another judge’s ruling that the middle school did not violate his First Amendment rights, despite his parents filing a federal free speech lawsuit.
According to David Cortman, ADF Senior Counsel and Vice President of U.S. Litigation, students do not forfeit their freedom of speech when they enter a school building.
The focus of this case is not on T-shirts, but rather on a public school’s attempt to silence a middle-school student who dared to express a viewpoint that differed from their own.
Morrison wore the controversial t-shirt and school officials allegedly asked him to either remove it or leave the school.
According to the student, school officials informed him that other students had expressed concerns about feeling “unsafe” and the situation being a disruption to their education.
He argued that the school district was violating his First Amendment right to free speech by making him change out of the shirt, asserting that they had deprived him of expressing a different opinion.
The student was asked to remove another top that had the message ‘there are censored genders’.
The petition to the Supreme Court stated that Morrison desired to engage in the marketplace of ideas at his school and discuss sociopolitical issues in a peaceful, silent, and non-specific manner.
The Court’s immediate attention is required to reaffirm the safeguarding of “unpopular ideas” under the Tinker standard. It is imperative to establish that public schools cannot enforce what is considered orthodox in matters of opinion, and that students should not be limited to expressing only officially approved sentiments.
