WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court won’t hear a challenge to a school district’s ban on shirts with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon.”
The phrase is a jab at former President Joe Biden with a coded reference to profanity. A Michigan mother of two says the school’s ban is a First Amendment violation.
The school told her sons to take off the sweatshirts she bought them for Christmas in 2022.
Lower courts upheld the ban, finding the veiled vulgarity of the phrase allows schools to ban it. It functions as a stand-in for “F— Joe Biden.”
The woman’s attorneys argued that the decision wrongly gives school officials wide latitude to squelch political speech open the basis of their personal ideas of what is vulgar. The phrase itself doesn’t contain any swear words or sexual implications, they said.
The school district urged the justices to reject the case, arguing that messages with lewd implications have no place in school, even if they touch on political topics. There has been evidence that some students wore clothing that read “Make America Great Again” or had messages supporting President Donald Trump, a Republican who lost the 2020 election to Biden, a Democrat.
The phrase originated in 2021, when people in the crowd at a NASCAR race chanted the obscenity directed at Biden and a TV sports reporter said they were calling out “Let’s Go, Brandon,” apparently believing they were chanting for driver Brandon Brown, who had just won a race.
See also: How much can public schools control what students wear?
The Free Speech Center newsletter offers a digest of First Amendment and news-media news every other week. Subscribe for free here: https://bit.ly/3kG9uiJ