CHARLESTON, WV (WVDN) — West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey is co-leading with South Carolina a multistate amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court to protect students’ First Amendment free speech rights.
A middle school student in Massachusetts wore a t-shirt to school that had the message, “There are only two genders.” School officials told the student he couldn’t wear the shirt. The student then put tape over the word “two,” so the message read, “There are only (censored) genders,” but school officials banned that, too.
The brief from the coalition asks the Supreme Court to hear the case after a lower court sided with the school.
“Free speech is just that, free speech no matter where it is—it is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution,” Attorney General Morrisey said. “Schools should encourage students to exercise their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression.”
The Supreme Court ruled in a 1969 case that teachers and students don’t ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate,’ and that’s what’s happening here.”
According to the brief, that 1969 case, known as Tinker, holds that “a student may express his mind ‘if he does so without materially and substantially interfering with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school and without colliding with the rights of others.’”
Attorneys General from Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, Texas, Utah and Virginia joined the West Virginia- and South Carolina-led brief.
