Liam Morrison, wearing the evil shirt that he wore the
second time teachers at Nichols Middle School sent
him home.

They’re coming for you next: In a ruling that completely contradicts long standing court rulings that had insisted the first amendment allowed students to wear T-shirts and armbands with whatever political statements they wished, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit on June 9, 2024 ruled that a Massachusetts middle school had the right to censor and ban a 12-year-old boy wearing a shirt that said “There are only two genders.”

This story is a follow-up of a blacklist story from May 2023. At that time 12-year-old Liam Morrison was forced to leave Nichols Middle School when he refused to remove his T-shirt that said “There are only two genders.” He later came to class with the T-shirt shown in the picture to the right, with the words “only two” covered with the word “censored.” He was once again sent home, and subsequently his parents sued.

According to the court’s ruling this week (which you can read here), a student’s political clothing doesn’t have to cause any disturbances at all. All that matters is if school officials think it might (or they simply dislike the ideas expressed).

“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,” U.S. Circuit Judge David Barron wrote for a unanimous panel of the court.

This ruling endorses an earlier lower court ruling by Judge Indira Talwani, who ruled in August 2023 that Morrison had no free speech rights at all.

All these judges were appointed by either Barack Obama or Joe Biden, and have apparently decided that it is okay for conservative speech to be banned by schools. In the original ruling from 1969, the court had ruled that armbands protesting the establishment and the war in Vietnam must be allowed, because the first amendment took precedent over everything. Then the student speech was coming from the left, and thus could not be banned. Now that it is coming from the right banning must be allowed.

What is most important is that the first amendment does not get cancelled just because a person is offended by someone’s speech. In fact, the whole point of the first amendment is to allow offensive speech. That these judges don’t understand this basic point of law is beyond belief. One wonders if they are all DEI hires (Didn’t Earn It), picked more for their gender or race than their qualifications. Below are the four judges who have ruled against Liam Morrison’s free speech rights.

We know that both Thompson and Talwani were DEI hires. Thompson was hailed as the first black woman judge on 1st Court of Appeals, while Talwani was celebrated as the first Asian judge in Massachusetts and the second such judge nationwide. And while Montecalvo apparently doesn’t have these distinctions, she is still a female judge appointed by the Democrats, who put race and gender as the most important qualification for all appointees.

Barron meanwhile might not have been a DEI appointment, but his appointment by Barack Obama was likely a quid pro quo because Barron wrote the legal memo within the Obama administration justifying the use of lethal drone strikes against U.S. citizens without judicial process. He clearly thinks the government has the right to do anything it wants to American citizens — including murdering them — while considering it okay to dismiss their rights nonchalently.

Morrison’s family will likely appeal. Whether the case gets picked up by the Supreme Court remains unknown.

As for Liam Morrison, this middle-schooler has already demonstrated a greater understanding of the law and the First Amendment then all these judges. Watch him do so before the Middleborough School Committee on April 13, 2024: