Free speech or hate speech: Middleboro student sent home for second time may sue school
MIDDLEBORO — After speaking in front of the Middleboro School Committee roughly a month ago, Liam Morrison, a 12-year-old seventh grader at Nichols Middle School who was recently sent home for his controversial T-shirt, came to school last week wearing the shirt again.
This time, the shirt looked different.
School staff pulled Morrison from class and sent him home in March when he wore a black T-shirt to class reading, "There are only two genders." Later, he told the school committee that the staff's actions violated his First Amendment right to free speech.
On Friday, May 5, after his family hired a lawyer to possibly file a lawsuit against the school, Morrison covered part of the message on his T-shirt with white tape and wrote "censored," so the shirt said, "There are censored genders."
The school sent him home again.
"At this point, Liam and his parents have decided to take legal action because we believe this is a clear violation of his First Amendment rights. So, we're in the process of getting ready to file a lawsuit against the school," said Sam Whiting of the Massachusetts Family Institute, the family's lawyer.
Several members of the Middleboro School Committee, as well as the district's superintendent Carolyn Lyons, did not respond to multiple requests from The Enterprise for comment.
According to Whiting, the school said that the message on Morrison's T-shirt qualifies as bullying and harassment, and the staff told Morrison that his shirt was targeting a "protected class" of students in the school.
What does the Middleboro school district's dress code say?
The district's dress code says that, “Clothing must not state, imply, or depict hate speech or imagery that target groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.”
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The most up-to-date version of the district's bullying prevention initiative available online is dated August 2020, and the document is supposed to be reviewed biennially.
Whiting sent a demand letter to the school district on April 27, informing officials that Morrison's family may take legal action. In the letter Whiting said the school's principal Heather Tucker "did not give any examples of disruptions or potential disruptions that the shirt had caused or was likely to cause."
According to Whiting, Tucker told Morrison at the time he was pulled from class that "several students and staff complained" about the message on Morrison's shirt, but "did not cite a particular number." Morrison told the school committee last month that no one complained to him, and some students even complimented him.
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The school district did not respond when asked for more information.
"He wore the shirt because he wanted to make a statement based on his deeply-held personal and political beliefs," Whiting said in the demand letter.
Whiting cited several cases, in support of his argument that the school district violated Morrison's free speech rights, including a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court case, Tinker v. Des Moines, in which the court said public school students "do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate." In another case that Whiting cited, K.D. v. Fillmore Cent. Sch. Dist., a federal court ruled "certain students' discomfort with a classmate's shirt that read 'Abortion is homicide' was not enough to justify censoring the shirt," Whiting said in the letter.
He also cited a Massachusetts case, Pyle v. South Hadley Sch. Comm., in which a federal court held that South Hadley High School's dress code was "facially unconstitutional because it discriminated based on viewpoint," Whiting said. He quoted the court in the case: "South Hadley's desire to teach students tolerance of persons with a different religion, race, gender or sexual orientation is certainly admirable. However, the school cannot silence speech that runs contrary to this laudable goal."
Representatives from ACLU of Massachusetts did not respond to The Enterprise's requests for comment on the Middleboro dress code.
Morrison asked his parents to buy him the T-shirt that later got him sent home from school. He believes the notion that there are more than two gender identities is "radical and untrue," Whiting said in his demand letter. But pride flags and posters about gender identity hang on the walls of Nichols Middle School classrooms.
Impacts on LGBTQ+ students
"We've seen increasing both violence and rhetoric against the LGBTQ community in the south coast to Taunton down to Fall River," said Andy Pollock, president of the South Coast LGBTQ+ Network.
Although she did not speak directly about the incident involving Morrison, school committee member Jessica Chartoff mentioned following Morrison's speech the "staggering numbers of death by suicide for young people in our country," during the meeting in reference to a recent mental health awareness event.
"There's one thing about free speech," Pollock said about Morrison's case. "But there's also the statistic for trans students or trans youth where they have a much higher rate of suicide ideation."
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The committee was also criticized at the April 13 meeting by resident Sarah Zigouras for the district's unresponsiveness to reports of bullying made by parents online.
"If it marginalizes and denigrates a certain population in the school, why shouldn't the student be sent home. If it makes someone more vulnerable to bullying, especially in populations that are marginalized, it's not necessarily free speech," Pollock said.
This article originally appeared on The Enterprise: Middleboro student sent home for 'censored' T-shirt may sue school
