The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal brought by two Michigan middle school students who were ordered to remove “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts at school, leaving in place a lower-court ruling that allowed the district to treat the slogan as vulgar speech rather than protected political expression.
The justices gave no explanation for turning away the case. It centered on students at Tri County Middle School in Howard City, Montcalm County, about 35 miles north of Grand Rapids, who were told by a teacher and an assistant principal to take off the shirts.
The denial leaves intact an October 2025 ruling from the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which found 2-1 that the school could prohibit the phrase as vulgar even though its underlying message was political.
“In the schoolhouse, vulgarity trumps politics,” Judge John Nalbandian, a Trump appointee, wrote in the majority opinion, joined by Judge Karen Nelson Moore, a Clinton appointee.
The phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” became a nationwide stand-in for criticism of then-President Joe Biden after an NBC reporter, Kelli Stavast, described a crowd chanting a vulgar phrase about Biden at a NASCAR event as instead cheering for driver Brandon Brown.
The boys’ mother filed suit in 2023, arguing the district violated her sons’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. School officials had reasoned that the slogan was “equivalent to the f-word.” Court filings identify the boys only by their initials. The case was brought on their behalf by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free-speech advocacy organization.
“Criticism of the president is core political speech protected by the First Amendment,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said in a statement. “Whether it’s a Biden sticker, ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirt or gay pride T-shirt, schools can’t pick and choose which political beliefs students can express.”
An attorney for the school district argued the shirts were barred under the dress code rather than because of their political content, and the district’s brief told the justices that lewd messages have no place in the classroom even when they touch on political subjects.
Judge John Bush, also a Trump appointee, dissented from the Sixth Circuit’s ruling, warning that the majority had given schools a tool that could be misused.
“If we allow schools the power to censor political speech by recharacterizing it as vulgarity, we risk turning disagreement with political speech into justification for its censorship,” Bush wrote.
Monday’s denial follows a similar decision by the court in May 2025, when the justices declined to hear a Massachusetts student’s challenge to a school ban on a shirt reading “There are only two genders.” In that case, Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented from the denial.
Reaction to the Michigan case split sharply online, with users divided over whether students retain their free-speech rights once they walk through the schoolhouse door.
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