Liam Morrison wore to Nichols Middle School a shirt that read “There are two genders.”
He says that the reaction from his classmates was overwhelming positive. He told Fox News Digital that “everyone in my homeroom, and in my gym class, had supported me in what I did.” Morrison, a 12-year-old student, said that no other students confronted him directly about the shirt. They also did not say it was offensive or made them uncomfortable.
He was pulled from gym class and asked to remove his shirt on March 21, after several students and teachers had complained. After he politely refused to remove the shirt, officials at his school called to have him picked up by his father.
Middleborough Public Schools Superintendent Carolyn Lyons claimed in an email that Morrison violated the dress code. The “content of Liam’s shirt” targeted students in a protected class, namely those with a gender identity.
The student in middle school said that he wore it to express his First Amendment rights to freedom of expression.
He explained that the reason he wore the shirt was because everyone has a rights to express their opinion and he wanted to have a chance to do so on a topic that many people were discussing. “I don’t like it that they broke what was basically the first thing the people in charge of America said we could do. And nowadays, it feels like this is being taken away from a lot of people. This is why some choose to speak out about it. It’s certainly not me.
Massachusetts Family Institute, a nonpartisan public policy group, sent NMS on Monday a letter of demand outlining how the organization violated Morrison’s First Amendment rights.
Sam Whiting is a staff lawyer for the organization, and one of the attorneys representing the Morrison Family, who told Fox News Digital that the action taken by the school was a “pretty clear case of censorship.”
There’s a Supreme Court case dating back to the 1960s, and perhaps even earlier that clearly states that students do not lose their right of free speech once they enter the schoolhouse. That’s what the school wanted to achieve here. Liam tried to express an opinion about a controversial topic in our culture. It’s a topic of political interest. Many people have differing opinions. “But they said, that opinion is not permitted in school, so you can’t say it,” he replied.
Whiting said that unless students are causing “material and significant disruptions in school”, or they’re advocating something like drug use, they have “the right to express their opinions- to express what their beliefs about things like this”.
“They’re saying that students were upset or complained about Liam’s shirt. He said that the law clearly states that students’ being upset by something you say does not cause a substantial disruption to justify the clampdown on your right to free speech.
Morrison said that if an offended student confronted him, he would not say anything more than “They have the right to their opinion just like I do.”
He explained, “If they ask me why I wear it and you have an opposing view, I would say that I have the right to speak out.”
He said he would wear the shirt to school again on May 5 because he “definitely was ready for it.”
Stoneman, Chandler & Miller LLP, a law firm that represents the school district, told Whiting and Morrison’s family on Thursday that the school would continue to prohibit the wearing of a tee shirt by Liam Morrison, or anyone else, which could be considered as discriminatory, harassing, or bullying towards others, including those who are non-conforming in their gender, by suggesting they do not exist, or that it is invalid.
Whiting stated that the Morrison family was preparing to sue the school, and that Liam planned to “wear something to school on Friday that would make a strong declaration about censorship.”
Fox News Digital has reached out to Middleborough Public School to get a comment, but so far it has not received a reply.