Court sides with school in ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ shirt case, says it’s vulgar

A federal appeals court ruled in favor of a Michigan school that made two students wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts remove them.

The students, two brothers, believed their First Amendment rights were violated in 2022 when the Tri County Middle School ordered them to remove the shirts that sported the phrase mocking former President Joe Biden. In the initial lawsuit, the school’s attorney had argued that the district “does not prohibit students from the right to express their political views or from wearing clothing with political slogans.”

However, at issue was the vulgar and offensive language allegedly inherent in the phrase, which essentially meant F*** Joe Biden.”

In a 2-1 decision on Tuesday, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the two students, agreeing with the school district that there was no First Amendment violation.

A federal appeals court upheld a Michigan school’s ban on “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts, ruling against two students and their mother in a free speech case. The Sixth Circuit Court decided 2-1 that the school’s 2022 order was valid, prioritizing the prohibition of vulgarity in… pic.twitter.com/PjonRxFVz2

— Chris Boyle (@heyChrisBoyle) October 15, 2025

“In the schoolhouse, vulgarity trumps politics. And the protection for political speech doesn’t give a student carte blanche to use vulgarity at school — even when that vulgarity is cloaked in innuendo or euphemism,” wrote Judges John Nalbandian and Karen Nelson Moore in their decision.

“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,” wrote Nalbandian, a Trump appointee. “Requesting that students remove clothing with that slogan didn’t violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”

Federal appeals court sides w/Tri County Area Schools, who said two students couldn’t wear “Let’s Go Brandon” shirts in school

“Because the school reasonably understood the slogan … to be vulgar, we affirm” dismissal of the lawsuit, the panel held

Circuit Judge Bush dissents pic.twitter.com/K7AarfjBYZ

— Lisa Roose-Church (@LisaRooseChurch) October 14, 2025

In a dissenting opinion, Judge John Bush argued that there was special protection for the slogan, which was different from using outright profanity.

“By displaying the message on these shirts publicly, the students participated in broader civic discourse, a notion the Supreme Court has never rendered inappropriate for the school environment,” he wrote.

“The phrase at issue here is a euphemism for political criticism. It contains no sexual content, no graphic imagery, and no actual profanity,” he noted. “To the extent that it implies an offensive phrase, it does so obliquely — by design.”

Bush, also a Trump appointee, said the phrase has “evolved into a widely recognized political slogan used to express opposition to a now-former president.”

“It is not vulgar on its face, nor so socially deviant that it must be sanitized from student expression,” he said. “It has become a political hallmark entitled to the First Amendment protection described in Tinker [v. Des Moines].”

“A student wearing a ’Let’s Go Brandon!’ sweatshirt is not engaging in the kind of ’offensively lewd’ or sexually explicit speech in the way Fraser contemplated,” Bush wrote in his dissent. “Although the phrase may carry a controversial or provocative undertone, it is fundamentally political — not plainly lewd or vulgar.”

The Washington Times reported that the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression will be appealing the court’s decision, saying, “Supreme Court precedent makes clear that public school students have a right to wear nondisruptive political apparel to school.”

“The majority held that no matter how careful teenagers are to express their political opinions in a nonprofane, school-appropriate way, schools may censor them if their expression might cause someone to think about a swear word,” FIRE lead attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said. “America’s students are not so fragile, and the First Amendment is not so brittle.”

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida where she has been writing for the BizPacReview team since 2015.

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