Authored by Dave Huber via The College Fix,
Lower courts have ruled school can ban wearing such apparel as ‘can reasonably be interpreted as profane’
The case of two Michigan middle-school brothers who were told to remove their hoodies emblazoned with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” is headed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The siblings are represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression which says the boys’ school violated their First Amendment rights.
The phrase was popularized during a 2021 NASCAR event when a crowd was shouting “F*** Joe Biden!” but the NBC interviewer told racer Brandon Brown they were yelling “Let’s go Brandon!”
A judge in 2024 ruled the phrase could “reasonably be interpreted” as profane.
Last October, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that ruling in a 2-1 decision, confirming the case was about “the vulgarity exception.”
Referencing the landmark Tinker free speech case, Judge John Nalbandian (a Trump appointee) wrote “The Constitution doesn’t hamstring school administrators when they are trying to limit profanity and vulgarity in the classroom during school hours [… they’re not] powerless to prevent student speech that the administrators reasonably understand to be profane or vulgar.”
(Ironically, the brothers’ principal, Joseph Williams, had said he “was not aware that the school had experienced any disruption from students wearing ‘Let’s Go Brandon’” sweatshirts.)
FIRE’s petition to the SCOTUS notes the previous rulings allow individual teachers and administrators to “create and enforce their own test for ‘vulgarity’ [–] a political shirt could have First Amendment protection in second-period algebra but not third-period biology.”
“Let’s Go Brandon” is no different than using words “heck” or “shoot” in place of their obvious profane counterparts.
FIRE Supervising Senior Attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said “The school district’s censorship assumes that students cannot handle seeing even sanitized expressions. But America’s next generation is not so fragile, and the First Amendment is not so brittle.”
