The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a First Amendment challenge brought by a Michigan mother after her two sons were prohibited from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts at their public school.
The justices rejected the appeal without comment, leaving intact a lower-court ruling that sided with Tri County Area Schools in western Michigan.
The dispute began after Amanda Diei bought sweatshirts bearing the political slogan for her sons as Christmas presents in 2022.
School officials subsequently instructed the boys to remove the clothing, concluding that the phrase violated district rules prohibiting vulgar or profane messages.
Diei sued, arguing that the school district had violated her sons’ constitutional right to free speech.
“Let’s Go Brandon” became a political slogan during former President Joe Biden’s administration.
Its origins trace to an October 2021 NASCAR race at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, where a crowd could be heard chanting an obscenity directed at Biden during a television interview with driver Brandon Brown.
The interviewer suggested the crowd was chanting “Let’s Go Brandon,” and the phrase quickly became a euphemistic way for Biden’s critics to express the profane sentiment.
It subsequently appeared on shirts, hats, signs and other political merchandise and was frequently used at Republican political events.
At issue in the Michigan case was whether the school could treat the phrase as profanity even though the words themselves are not vulgar.
Diei argued that the district’s decision amounted to unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination because “Let’s Go Brandon” also functions as a recognizable political statement criticizing a president.
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, represented the family.
“The First Amendment doesn’t have a profanity exception, much less an exception for political speech that some people understand to reference profanity,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said following the Supreme Court’s decision.
The organization argued that allowing schools to prohibit euphemisms for offensive language could give administrators broad authority to suppress otherwise protected political expression.
Tri County Area Schools defended its policy as a content-neutral effort to prevent students from displaying vulgar messages.
The district maintained that it had prohibited other clothing containing profanity or phrases understood to represent profanity regardless of the political viewpoint being expressed.
A federal district judge initially ruled largely in favor of the school system.
The Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals subsequently upheld that decision.
The appeals court concluded that school officials could reasonably determine that “Let’s Go Brandon” conveyed a profane message and could regulate it under Supreme Court precedents giving public schools greater authority over student speech than the government ordinarily possesses outside the school environment.
The case implicated several landmark Supreme Court decisions involving student expression.
In *Tinker v. Des Moines* in 1969, the court famously ruled that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.”
That decision protected students who wore black armbands protesting the Vietnam War unless school officials could demonstrate that the expression would substantially disrupt school operations.
But subsequent decisions have recognized exceptions.
In *Bethel School District v. Fraser* in 1986, the Supreme Court upheld disciplinary action against a student who delivered a speech containing sexual innuendo, ruling that schools could prohibit lewd and vulgar student expression.
The Michigan dispute centered partly on how those principles apply when political expression indirectly references profanity without actually displaying the profane words.
Diei’s attorneys asked the Supreme Court to review the case, arguing that the 6th Circuit’s approach weakened protections for student political speech and gave schools excessive discretion to decide what constitutes offensive expression.
The school district urged the justices to leave the ruling intact.
By declining the case, the Supreme Court did not decide whether “Let’s Go Brandon” is constitutionally protected student speech or endorse the lower court’s reasoning.
The justices typically hear only a small fraction of the thousands of appeals submitted each term, and they generally provide no explanation when declining review.
This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
