The Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to hear a case from a minor whose Massachusetts middle school refused to let him wear a shirt that said "THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS," reinvigorating the debate about how much latitude public schools have to restrict students' speech in the classroom.
The plaintiff—a 12-year-old 7th grader at the time of the incident, identified as L.M. in the lawsuit—was booted from class in 2023 and sent home from Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, after he refused to change clothes. When he came back wearing a shirt that said "THERE ARE CENSORED GENDERS"—the same shirt but with "CENSORED" written across a piece of tape—he was sent to meet with the principal, who said he could keep the shirt in his backpack or in the assistant principal's office. He obliged and returned to class.
When L.M. first sued, alleging a First Amendment violation, Judge Indira Talwani of the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts ruled that the school likely acted within its rights and thus denied his request for a preliminary injunction. "School administrators were well within their discretion to conclude that the statement 'THERE ARE ONLY TWO GENDERS' may communicate that only two gender identities—male and female—are valid, and any others are invalid or nonexistent," she wrote, "and to conclude that students who identify differently, whether they do so openly or not, have a right to attend school without being confronted by messages attacking their identities."
