Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach has filed a friend-of-the-court brief with the U.S. Supreme Court in a Massachusetts case involving free speech rights of students. Kansas is one of 18 states asking the Court to hear the case.
A middle school student in Massachusetts wore a t-shirt to school that had the message, “There are only two genders.” School officials told the student he couldn’t wear the shirt. The student then put tape over the word “two,” so the message read, “There are only (censored) genders,” but school officials banned that too. A lower court ruled in favor of the school.
Kobach said in a press release that the right to free speech does not disappear inside a school building. The brief refers to a 1969 case known as Tinker, and it argues that the Supreme Court ruled in that case that, “a student may express his mind ‘if he does so without materially and substantially interfering with the requirements of appropriate discipline in the operation of the school and without colliding with the rights of others.”
Other states joining in the brief include Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa and Indiana.
