This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
A school's decision to impose its own select gender ideology on all messaging at the school, including those messages on T-shirts, is being challenged at the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals.
The dispute is over the ban, by Nichols Middle School in Middleborough, Massachusetts, on two shirts a student wanted to wear.
One said, "There are only two genders" and the other "There are [censored] genders."
A notice of appeal was filed after a lower court sided with the school in its attack on the free speech of Liam Morrison.
"This isn’t about a T-shirt; this is about a public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that differs from the school’s orthodoxy," said ADF Legal Counsel Logan Spena. "Public school officials can’t force Liam to remove a shirt that states his position when the school lets every other student wear clothing that speaks on the same issue. Their choice to double-down and silence him when he tried to protest their censorship is a gross violation of the First Amendment that we’re urging the 1st Circuit to rectify."
The action was brought by the ADF and the Massachusetts Family Institute weeks ago after he wore the "two genders" shirt, "informed by his scientific understanding of biology," and the school principal went ballistic, pulling him out of class and ordering him to remove the shirt.
In fact, officials ordered that he could not return to class with the shirt.
The second shirt was censored as soon as he arrived at school with it.
The ADF explains "school officials have adopted one particular view on the subject 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 view through their own speech, instituted schoolwide 'Pride' events celebrating their view, and encouraged students to engage in their own speech on this subject—so long as the students express the school’s favored viewpoint. School officials admit that their policy permits students to express viewpoints supporting the officials’ view of gender but forbids students from expressing a different view."
