About this Case
A school district repeatedly told one of its students that he could not wear a number of different shirts to school, despite acknowledging that none of the shirts were offensive, nor would they cause a disruption to the school. Both the district court and the court of appeals ruled in favor of the school district. The student then asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.
Summary of NLF's Brief
In the first brief, filed in the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, we argued that a key Supreme Court precedent from the 1960’s, in addition to being constitutionally correct, is necessary because of compulsory attendance laws in force in all fifty states. Our second brief was filed in support of the student at the Supreme Court. We explained that the policies at issue in this case allowed the school to shut down virtually all student speech on t-shirts—not just the speech at issue in the case itself. We also explained that many lower courts have applied the wrong legal test. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case.