President Trump’s executive order on “two sexes” could certainly play a key role in the local student’s “only two genders” T-shirt case, as his lawyers try to get the Supreme Court to take his suit.
Middleboro student Liam Morrison when he was in seventh grade was banned by middle school officials from wearing a shirt to school that read, “There are only two genders.” Liam then wore a shirt that stated, “There are censored genders,” and again, he was ordered to take off the shirt.
A U.S. district judge previously ruled in favor of the Middleboro school officials, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit in Boston then affirmed the district court’s ruling.
This prompted Liam’s attorneys with Alliance Defending Freedom to ask the Supreme Court to review the case and rule that Nichols Middle School violated the First Amendment when it stopped the student from wearing his shirts to school.
As Liam’s lawyers wait for a decision from the Supreme Court on whether the nation’s highest court will hear the case, Trump issued an executive order on two genders.
“It is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female,” Trump’s executive order reads. “These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality. Under my direction, the Executive Branch will enforce all sex-protective laws to promote this reality.”
“‘Gender identity’ reflects a fully internal and subjective sense of self, disconnected from biological reality and sex and existing on an infinite continuum, that does not provide a meaningful basis for identification and cannot be recognized as a replacement for sex,” the order reads.
This “two sexes” executive order could certainly help Liam’s case if his lawsuit makes it to the Supreme Court, according to the head of the New England First Amendment Coalition.
“The dress code of the school prohibits clothing that targets groups based on, among other things, gender identity and sexual orientation,” NEFAC President Gregory V. Sullivan told the Herald.
“Now according to the current federal administration, gender identity is not even a valued concept,” Sullivan added. “Therefore, you wouldn’t be able to demean someone based on the basis of gender identity.”
Liam’s attorneys are with Alliance Defending Freedom, and the group’s legal counsel Logan Spena said the executive order on two genders is likely something they would bring up if the case makes it to the Supreme Court.
The attorneys have been arguing that Liam has a First Amendment constitutional right to wear this shirt to school, and this executive order now “puts school officials in a deeper hole in their ability to meet the legal standard,” Spena said.
Under the Supreme Court precedent about First Amendment rights at school, the court has found that school officials cannot censor student speech unless it disrupts the educational process — or they can prove there’s a reasonable forecast of substantial disruption.
“It (the executive order) puts the school officials in a tough spot,” Spena said. “It really strains their ability to make the forecast argument. We think in any case the school was never going to meet its burden, but this now does make the reasonableness of their argument even more strained.”
Liam’s attorneys are hoping the Supreme Court takes up their case later this year.
The Herald reached out to Middleboro school officials about the case, and the impact of Trump’s executive order.
“At this time, we are unable to provide a comment due to pending litigation,” Superintendent Carolyn Lyons said in a statement. “We appreciate your understanding and will share more information when appropriate.”
The Middleboro school district each year celebrates Pride month, hanging Pride flags and sending the message that there are “an unlimited number of genders,” one of Liam’s lawyers had argued in front of the appeals court.
In response to the school’s view, Liam wore the controversial shirt to Nichols Middle School.
School officials in response told Liam to either take off the shirt or leave school for the day. Liam chose to miss the rest of his classes that day.
When the Middleboro principal pulled Liam out of class and told him he had to take off his shirt, the principal said they had received complaints about the words on his shirt — and that the words might make some students feel unsafe.
“Middleborough was enforcing a dress code, so it was making a forecast regarding the disruptive impact of a particular means of expression and not of, say, a stray remark on a playground, a point made during discussion or debate, or a classroom inquiry,” the appeals court wrote in its ruling. “The forecast concerned the predicted impact of a message that would confront any student proximate to it throughout the school day.”
School officials “knew the serious nature of the struggles, including suicidal ideation, that some of those students had experienced related to their treatment based on their gender identities by other students, and the effect those struggles could have on those students’ ability to learn,” the appeals court wrote.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is one of the free speech groups backing Liam’s case.
FIRE Chief Counsel Bob Corn-Revere said, “Someone simply having this message on a T-shirt is not violating others rights, and we believe the appeals court got it wrong.”
