When it comes down to it, I agree with Liam Morrison that “I have a right to be heard.”
At Nichols Middle School (NMS), Liam Morrison wore a shirt that said, “There are only two genders,” knowing full well that he would get blowback.
He claimed that the vast majority of his friends were happy to see him. As he put it to Fox News Digital, “everyone in my homeroom and everyone in my gym class supported what I had done.” Morrison (12) says he hasn’t heard of any other kids complaining about how the clothes make them feel.
On March 21, however, due to student and teacher complaints, he was expelled from the physical education class and had to strip down to his underwear. Because he refused to dress appropriately, the school contacted his father.
According to Fox News Digital, Middleborough Public Schools Superintendent Carolyn Lyons said that Morrison wrote an email in which she broke the school’s dress code. An inquiry concluded that “the content of Liam’s shirt was aimed at students from a protected class; in particular, it was about gender identity.”
The seventh kid brings up the First Amendment to justify his behavior.
Since I feel that everyone should be entitled to have their own perspective, I wore it to express my disagreement with an issue that has gained a lot of attention. It bothers me that they broke the very first rule our American overlords set. When people feel they have been ignored for too long, they are more likely to speak up. I swear I’m not making this up!
On Monday, the nonpartisan Massachusetts public policy nonprofit MFI warned NMS that it had violated the First Amendment rights of one of its employees, Morrison.
When asked about the school’s activities, the Morrisons’ in-house attorney Sam Whiting told Fox News Digital that it was “a pretty clear case of censorship.”
The right to free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment does not expire when the school day does. This is readily apparent from Supreme Court decisions dating back to the 1960s. This has always been the organization’s ultimate goal. Liam yearned to make an announcement to the world about something very important to him. This is a political issue. Solutions to this problem have been presented using a wide range of theoretical frameworks. “But they told me that, you know, that opinion is not allowed at school, so I can’t say it,” he said.
A student’s “right to express their political opinions—to express their beliefs on things like this” is protected by the First Amendment, says Whiting, so long as such beliefs do not promote “material and substantial disruption in school” or illegal activities like drug use.
They probably want to make it seem like some pupils have taken offense to Liam’s clothes and filed an official complaint. He claimed that the fact that some individuals might be upset by what you say isn’t enough to justify violating your legal right to free expression.
Morrison said that if a kid made fun of the way he looked, he would remind them, “They have the same right to an opinion as I do.”
“If you have a different opinion, and if they asked me why I was wearing it, I’d tell them that I have a right to be heard,” he said.
On May 5th, after trying it on for the second time, he said that he was “definitely ready for it.”
In a meeting with Whiting and Morrison’s family on Thursday afternoon, attorneys for the school district, Stoneman, Chandler & Miller LLP, reiterated the school’s policy that “prohibits Liam Morrison or anyone else from wearing a T-shirt that is likely to be seen as discriminatory, harassing, or bullying to others, including those who are gender nonconforming by suggesting that their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression does not exist or is wrong.”
After deciding to sue the school, the Morrisons’ lawyer, Whiting, said their son, Liam, will “wear something to school on Friday that will make a strong statement about censorship.”
To date, Fox News Digital’s comment requests to Middleborough Public School have gone unanswered.