By LINDSAY WHITEHURST
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is rebuffing an appeal from a Michigan woman fighting a school district’s ban on shirts with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon,” a jab at then-President Joe Biden with a coded reference to profanity.
The mother of two boys says their First Amendment rights were violated when they were told to take off the sweatshirts she bought them for Christmas in 2022.
A lower court disagreed, finding that the veiled vulgarity of the phrase, which functions as a stand-in for “F-— Joe Biden,” allows schools to ban it.
The woman’s attorneys argued that the decision wrongly gives school officials wide latitude to squelch political speech based on 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.
Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.
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