A Massachusetts family is preparing to take legal action after their 12-year-old son was removed from his school for the second time for wearing “harmful” t-shirts that said, “There are only two genders.”
On March 21, Liam Morrison was pulled out of his gym class at Nichols Middle School to speak with two adult employees who told him that he needed to change his shirt before returning to class. They told the boy that his shirt was making some students “feel unsafe” at school because he directly opposed radical gender theory, which claims that there are infinite genders a person can choose from.
Liam Morrison respectfully told the two school employees that he did not want to remove his shirt, which led the school staff to call Liam’s father because he would be sent home for the day. Liam’s father approved of his decision to not remove his shirt and took him home for the remainder of the day.
“They told me that I wasn’t in trouble, I sure felt like I was,” Liam said when addressing his district’s school board. “I have been told that my shirt was targeting a protected class, who is this protected class? Are their feelings more important than my rights?”
“I was told that the shirt was a disruption to learning, no one got up and stormed out of class, on one burst into tears — I’m sure I would have noticed if they had. I experience disruptions to my learning every day, kids acting out in class are a disruption yet nothing is done . . . I feel like these adults were telling me that it wasn’t okay for me to have an opposing view.”
-Liam Morrison
After the incident, Liam’s family contacted Massachusetts Family Institute (MFI), a non-profit organization focusing on public policy in the state, that later sent a letter to the school demanding it stop censoring free speech on campus. In the letter, MFI claimed that the school did not provide any specific examples of people who were offended or harmed by Liam’s shirt, even after they alleged that “several” people issued complaints.
“Public school students do not ‘shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate.’ . . . unless a school can prove that a student’s speech would ‘materially and substantially interfere with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school’ or ‘impinge upon the rights of other students,’ it may not censor that speech.”
“Now that NMS is on notice that hindering him from wearing the shirt is a violation of his constitutional rights, we trust that it will not interfere with Liam doing so again. If it does, it may be necessary to take legal action against the school district. Please confirm in writing at your earliest opportunity that Liam will be allowed to wear the shirt.”
-Massachusetts Family Institute
Liam was once again asked to leave class on May 5 for wearing a shirt that read “There are CENSORED genders.” What legal action MFI plans to take remains to be seen.
This piece first appeared on TPUSA.
