The student said he chose the black baseball cap for Hat Day, a week-long kindness initiative, because it reminded him of his father and showed his support for gun rights.
Supreme Court rejects Tennessee vanity plate free speech appeal
Lawyers for a Tennessee woman who is challenging the denial of a 69PWNDU plate have argued that the state’s rules have led to “a dizzying array of censorship.”
WASHINGTON – The hats worn by Michigan third-graders in 2022 during their school’s “Great Kindness Challenge” featured an image of an AR-style rifle and the phrase “Come and Receive.”
The student said he chose the black baseball cap for Hat Day, a week-long kindness initiative, because it reminded him of his father and showed his support for gun rights.
Officials at Robert Carr Elementary School in Durand, Michigan, said the hat’s message could be confusing, especially for students who recently transferred to the district after the worst mass shooting in the state’s history, which occurred at a school 80 miles away.
On June 8, the Supreme Court declined to consider a lower court’s ruling that schools did not violate students’ free speech rights by banning hats.
Last year, the court similarly waived the opportunity to decide whether a Massachusetts school erred by banning T-shirts that read “There are only two genders.”
Both lawsuits are based on a landmark 1969 case that protects students’ First Amendment rights as long as their speech is not too disruptive. In the case, the Supreme Court said a Des Moines high school could not prevent students from wearing black armbands in support of ending the Vietnam War.
By contrast, in 2007, the high court said Alaska students had no First Amendment right to display banners with the message “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.”
The Michigan students’ appeal failed, with lawyers arguing that school officials’ real motive was to silence views they disagreed with and failed to show evidence that the hats were subversive.
“Rather than seize the opportunity to tell a bright, politically aware 8-year-old student that her voice and ideas matter, school officials told her to sit down and shut up, perhaps because they personally disliked the Second Amendment and the rights it protects,” Adam Straub, an attorney for the student and her father, said in the appeal.
Lawyers for the school said that in addition to concerns over recent school shootings, the school’s dress code prohibits clothing with violent themes.
A district court and the Cincinnati-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals both ruled against the students.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court said concerns about disruption at the school were reasonable given recent school shootings, the ages of the students and the provocative messages on the hats.
When the appellate court declined to rehear the case, Judge Chad Readler called these factors a “rare confluence of events.”
He said it is “very unlikely that a similar factual tapestry will be woven in future First Amendment challenges.”
