NewsRescue
On Wednesday, a Massachusetts district judge refused a request from the lawyers of a 12-year-old student who wanted to exercise his free speech rights by wearing a t-shirt that said “there are only two genders.”
While the court examines its ultimate ruling, the US District Court for the District of Massachusetts in Boston refused to give an interim injunction blocking Nichols Middle School from restricting seventh grader Liam Morrison’s ability to communicate his gender opinions.
“Liam’s not asking to literally wear whatever he wants, but he is asking to do what other students are already allowed to do, which is to express their views on this topic in a non-disruptive manner,” Alliance Defending Freedom legal attorney Logan Spena told Fox News on Thursday.
“They claim that because Liam’s message is not inclusive, they can exclude it,” he went on to say. “What they don’t consider is how their own speech, as well as all the other speech they already allow, affects Liam.”
Morrison was pulled out of gym class and asked to remove the clothing in question on March 21. The ADF and Massachusetts Family Institute sued Nichols Middle School and the town of Middleborough on his behalf last month. When he refused, his father was summoned to pick him up.
School officials allegedly told the seventh-grader that his shirt was “targeting a protected class” and causing a “disruption to learning” by making some people feel “unsafe,” though he later told the Middleborough School Committee that “not one person” expressed discomfort or upset when he wore the shirt to class.
When Morrison challenged the school’s censorship by wearing another shirt to class last month that read “there are only censored genders,” he was hauled out of class and asked to remove it as well.
Morrison asked who the “protected class” he had offended at a Middleborough School Committee meeting in April. “Are their feelings more important than my rights?” he wondered, noting that he didn’t object when the school displayed “pride flags and diversity posters” in the hallways since “others have a right to their beliefs, just as I do.”
Nichols Middle School has maintained its dress code, which forbids slogans on apparel that “state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.”
The lawsuit claims that the school’s promotion of Pride month and other LGBTQ programs while prohibiting Morrison from expressing his opposing views violates both the First and Fourteenth Amendments, which provide equal protection under the law. The next hearing is set for June 13th.