Supreme Court declines First Amendment case of students forced to remove ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirts

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a First Amendment appeal from two middle school students who were ordered to remove sweatshirts emblazoned with the words “Let’s Go Brandon,” steering clear of a case that could have clarified the power schools have to police potentially offense speech in the classroom.

By not granting the appeal, the justices left in place an appeals court decision that favored the school district.

The phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” became right-wing code for “F**k Joe Biden.” It began at a NASCAR race in 2021 as a crowd chanted the more vulgar phrase but a reporter, interviewing a driver named Brandon Brown, suggested the crowd was instead cheering him on.

The two students, who are brothers — one in eighth grade at the time and the other in sixth — wore the sweatshirts to Tri County Middle School in Michigan in 2022. In separate encounters, a teacher and an assistant principal asked the students, identified only by their initials in court papers, to take the sweatshirts off. The family sued in 2023, alleging violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

A decision in the case, expected next year, would have further defined the free-speech rights of students in school nearly six decades after the Supreme Court allowed students to wear black armbands in protest of the Vietnam War. That landmark ruling, Tinker v. Des Moines, held that students do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter school.

But there are exceptions to that rule. Schools may prohibit speech that disrupts the classroom, for one. And, in a 1986 precedent that is central to the sweatshirt case, the Supreme Court ruled that schools may prohibit vulgar and offensive language, noting the context.

To demonstrate that lewd speech that may not qualify for protection in the classroom if it comes in “sanitized code, innuendo, and double meaning,” the school district — represented by veteran Supreme Court lawyer Lisa Blatt — relied on some eye-opening examples. The district’s brief included a t-shirt that depicted President Donald Trump clutching several cats with the words “And that’s how you GRAB EM!” in reference to the “Access Hollywood tape, ” which captured Trump in 2005 on a hot mic saying he gropes and kisses women.

“Take the number 69. Although on its face it is just a number innocently falling between 68 and 70, many understand it to refer to a sexual position,” the school district told the Supreme Court. “Respondents apologize for the use of offensive language and images in this brief.”

A divided panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the school district. The family is represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Five years ago, an 8-1 Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former high school cheerleader who argued that she could not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds. The case involving a Pennsylvania teenager was closely watched to see how the court would handle the free speech rights of some 50 million public school children and the concerns of schools over off-campus and online speech that could amount to a disruption of the school’s mission or rise to the level of bullying or threats.

“It might be tempting to dismiss (the student’s) words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein,” Justice Stephen Breyer, who has since retired, wrote for the court. “But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”

乔纳森·恩斯特/路透社

周一，最高法院拒绝受理两名中学生提出的第一修正案上诉，这两名学生被勒令脱掉印有“加油布兰登”字样的运动衫。最高法院避开了这起可能澄清学校在课堂上监管潜在冒犯性言论的权力的案件。

法官们不予受理上诉，维持了有利于学区的上诉法院判决。

“加油布兰登”这句话后来成了右翼人士对“去他妈的乔·拜登”的暗语。这件事始于2021年的一场纳斯卡赛车比赛，当时人群高喊着这句更粗俗的口号，但一位采访车手布兰登·布朗的记者却表示，人群实际上是在为他加油。

这两名学生是兄弟，当时一个读八年级，另一个读六年级。2022年，他们穿着这件运动衫到密歇根州的三县中学上学。在不同的场合，一名教师和一名副校长要求这两名学生（法庭文件中仅以姓名首字母指代）脱掉运动衫。2023年，这两名学生的家人提起诉讼，指控学校违反了美国宪法第一修正案和第十四修正案。

预计明年将对这起案件作出裁决，该裁决将进一步界定学生在校期间的言论自由权利。近六十年前，最高法院允许学生佩戴黑臂章抗议越南战争。这项具有里程碑意义的裁决——“廷克诉得梅因独立学区案”（Tinker v. Des Moines）——认定，学生进入学校后，其受宪法第一修正案保护的权利并未丧失。

但凡事皆有例外。例如，学校可以禁止扰乱课堂秩序的言论。此外，在1986年的一项判例中（该判例对“运动衫案”至关重要），最高法院裁定，学校可以禁止粗俗和冒犯性语言，但需视具体语境而定。

为了证明，如果淫秽言论以“经过粉饰的隐晦表达、暗示和双关语”的形式出现，可能不符合课堂上的保护标准，学区——由资深最高法院律师丽莎·布拉特代理——列举了一些令人震惊的例子。学区的辩护状中包含一件T恤，上面印着唐纳德·特朗普总统抱着几只猫的形象，并写着“这就是你抓猫的方式！”，这是在影射2005年“走进好莱坞”录音带事件。该录音带中，特朗普在麦克风未关闭的情况下承认自己会猥亵和亲吻女性。

“以数字69为例。虽然它表面上只是一个介于68和70之间的普通数字，但许多人却将其理解为一种性姿势，”学区向最高法院表示。“被告就本诉状中使用冒犯性语言和图像一事致歉。”

美国第六巡回上诉法院的一个意见分歧的合议庭最终支持了学区的诉求。该家庭的代理律师是个人权利与表达基金会。

五年前，最高法院以8比1的投票结果，裁定一位前高中啦啦队员胜诉。该队员辩称，她不应因在校外使用Snapchat发布带有脏话的文字而受到公立学校的惩罚。这起涉及宾夕法尼亚州一名青少年的案件备受关注，人们关注法院将如何处理约5000万公立学校学生的言论自由权，以及学校对校外和网络言论的担忧——这些言论可能扰乱学校的正常教学秩序，甚至构成欺凌或威胁。

“人们或许会倾向于认为（这位学生的）言论不值得享有本文所讨论的强有力的第一修正案保护，”已退休的大法官斯蒂芬·布雷耶代表法院写道，“但有时为了维护必要的权利，有必要保护多余的权利。”