WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court declined Monday to take up an appeal from two students who were banned by their Michigan middle school from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts due to the anti-Joe Biden slogan’s vulgar underlying meaning.
The high court chose to leave in place an October 2025 ruling by the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, which found “that the school could reasonably prohibit the sweatshirts since they were vulgar speech.”
No reason was given by the high court for declining to take up the appeal.
“Let’s Go Brandon” was widely adopted in the fall of 2021 as a substitute for the phrase “F— Joe Biden” after NBC reporter Kelli Stavast misheard the profane chant by the crowd while interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown following the Xfinity Series’ Sparks 300 that October.
“Here, the school administrators reasonably interpreted the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ slogan as being vulgar speech that ‘a school may categorically prohibit’ despite its political message,” the Sixth Circuit affirmed in a 2-1 decision. “Requesting that students remove clothing with that slogan didn’t violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
“In the schoolhouse, vulgarity trumps politics,” wrote Judge John Nalbandian, an appointee of President Trump, in the majority opinion.
Another Trump appointee, Judge John Bush, wrote in dissent: “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 — something the First Amendment flatly forbids.”
The mother of the middle school boys who wore the shirts sued the school district in 2023, claiming that the ban infringed on her sons’ First Amendment rights.
The district had barred the shirts after deeming their message in violation of the school dress code — and not because of the political element, according to an attorney representing Tri County Middle School in Howard City, about 35 miles north of Grand Rapids.
An assistant principal and teacher had asked the brothers to take off the sweatshirts since their message was deemed “equivalent to the f-word,” according to the lawsuit.
The suit was filed on behalf of the mother by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a free speech legal and advocacy group.
“Criticism of the president is core political speech protected by the First Amendment,” said FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick in a statement at the time. “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.”
