MIDDLEBOROUGH, Mass. — A Middleborough seventh-grader is asking a Boston court to stop his school’s ban on “There are only two genders” and “There are genders censored” T-shirts that school officials gave him they ordered him to withdraw from school. violating his First Amendment rights, his attorney said Monday.
Liam Morrison wore a T-shirt that said “There are only two genders” to Nichols Middle School in March, and the school’s principal, along with a school counselor, pulled Liam from class and ordered him to take off his shirt, the boy’s. The lawyer, Logan Spena, said in a statement.
“After Liam politely declined, school officials said he had to remove his shirt or he wouldn’t be able to return to class. As a result, Liam left school and missed the rest of his classes that day day,” said Spena, who will argue the boy’s case in U.S. District Court in Boston on Tuesday.
After that, Liam wore another T-shirt to school that said, “Gender is censored,” to protest school officials that only certain messages about gender are allowed at school, Spena said.
“As soon as (Liam) got to school, his teacher told him to go to the principal’s office where he was told he couldn’t wear that shirt to school either,” Spena said.
Spena is legal counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, which along with the Massachusetts Family Institute filed a lawsuit last month on Liam’s behalf.
“It’s not about a shirt; this is a public school telling a seventh grader that he is not allowed to have a different view than the orthodoxy of the school,” Spena said. “Public school officials cannot force Liam to remove a shirt that states his position when the school allows every other student to wear clothing that speaks to the same issue. His choice to fold and silence him when attempted to protest its censorship is a serious violation of the First Amendment that we ask the court to rectify.”
Boston 25 reached out to Middleborough Public Schools for comment Monday. An assistant to Superintendent of Schools Carolyn Lyons declined to comment, saying the school district is being represented by legal counsel and that “this is an ongoing litigation.”
Tuesday’s hearing involves a motion for a preliminary injunction, in which Spena is asking the court to stop Nichols Middle School from banning Liam from wearing his shirts to school while the case continues.
Alliance Defending Freedom is a nonprofit legal organization “committed to protecting religious freedom, free speech, parental rights, and the sanctity of life,” according to its website.
In the case, attorneys for the Alliance Defending Freedom argue that Middleborough school officials “have taken a particular view on the issue of sex and gender: that a person’s subjective identity determines whether a person is male or female, not a person’s sex.”
“They have expressed this vision through their own speech; they instituted school-wide events to celebrate their point of view; and encouraged students to engage in their own discourse on the issue, as long as students express the school’s favored point of view,” according to Alliance Defending Freedom. “School officials admit that their policy allows students to express views that support the officials’ gender view, but prohibits students from expressing a different view.”
Liam wore the first shirt “to peacefully share his belief, informed by his scientific understanding of biology, that there are only two sexes, male and female, and that a person’s gender—their status as a child or girl, woman or man. “It’s inextricably linked to sex,” Spena said.
The boy’s lawyer said the case involves school officials’ “censorship” of Liam’s message, along with “their decision to silence his speech protesting its censorship” and “this violates the first and the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution.”
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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