Middle School Students' First Amendment Fight Continues
“The First Amendment is only as real as our willingness to protect it and recognize it, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard."
By Denise Rivette
According to multiple reports, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against two students who sued after a school punished them for wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts. The phrase gained popularity during the Biden administration when announcers mistook the crowd’s chanting of “F**k Joe Biden” for “Let’s Go, Brandon” after Brandon Brown won a 2021 NASCAR race. It has since been used to mock former President Biden.
In a 2-1 decision Tuesday, the court ruled in favor of Tri County Middle School in Michigan. The case was filed in response to an occurrence in 2022, when school officials made two brothers who wore “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts take them off. The School claimed it was not censoring political speech. The court’s ruling agreed, saying it did not violate the First Amendment because the shirts were targeted for obscenity, not political beliefs.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) brought the suit on behalf of the students. The posted a video today explaining the case and their motivation for continuing the fight to the Supreme Court. They described the situation as follows:
“An administrator and a teacher told a handful of students that they couldn’t express their political opinions. They could not wear, let’s go Brandon branded sweatshirts, and they told one student that he couldn’t wear a reelect Trump campaign flag as a cape, while simultaneously allowing other students to wear rainbow pride flags as capes when they relax their dress code during the final week of school.”
What the “School is doing here is arguing that not only can we prohibit you from using swear words, we can prohibit you from expressing a message which even makes people think about swear words. The First Amendment doesn’t allow that. Schools can prohibit students from swearing, from engaging in sexually explicit speech, and from engaging in speech that can reasonably be seen as promoting illegal drug use. But what school administrators and teachers can’t do is prohibit political expression just because they don’t like what you have to say.”
“Students absolutely have the right to speak their mind. The Supreme Court has made clear, famously in 1969 Tinker V Des Moines, Independent Community School District, that students don’t shed their rights at the schoolhouse gate, and that includes their First Amendment rights. Now there are some exceptions. Right. You can’t talk back to your teacher and tell you don’t want to do your homework, but when you’re in the common area of the school, or what you’re wearing to school, it’s got a political slogan on it, yeah, you’re protected. You’re even protected if you were a black armband like Mary Beth Tinker did to protest the Vietnam War.”
“The Supreme Court has called America’s public schools nurseries of democracy. Schools have a responsibility to prepare students to live in a country where their co workers and neighbors might not think pray or vote the same way they do. Encountering different viewpoints is part of being an American, and it’s part of an American education. With this lawsuit, fire intends to cement the First Amendment right of America’s public school students to peacefully express their political views when they go to school.”
“The First Amendment is only as real as our willingness to protect it and recognize it, even when it’s hard, especially when it’s hard, especially when the student wearing a t shirt that most other students don’t agree with, or maybe nobody agrees with. That’s when it’s most important. If we don’t protect student first amend rights in our public schools, and those students will grow up to think that the First Amendment doesn’t really mean what it says, or it’s optional, but you can throw it out when you really don’t like the speech. With this litigation, fire hopes to send the message that we will defend first amendment rights wherever they’re threatened, and that includes our public grade schools, in fact, maybe especially our public grade schools, because we feel a responsibility as free speech advocates to make sure the First Amendment lives on for future generations, and that’s what we’re doing.”
You can watch the entire video below:
To find out more about FIRE and their work, go to their website HERE.
The announcers never mistook what the crowd was chanting. They didn't want to acknowledge what was really happening.