Supreme Court rejects Michigan woman’s appeal of school’s ban on ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirts

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court rejects the appeal of a Michigan woman fighting a school district’s ban on shirts with the phrase “Let’s go Brandon,” an attack on then-President Joe Biden with a coded reference to profanity.

The mother of two boys claims their First Amendment rights were violated when they were asked to remove sweatshirts she bought them for Christmas 2022.

A lower court disagreed, finding that the veiled vulgarity of the phrase, which replaces “F—— Joe Biden,” allows schools to ban it.

The woman’s lawyers argued that the ruling wrongly gives school officials wide latitude to stifle political speech based on their personal ideas about what is vulgar. The sentence itself contains no swear words or sexual implications, they said.

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The school district urged judges to throw out the case, arguing that messages with obscene implications have no place in schools, even if they touch on political topics. Some students were found to be wearing clothing that read “Make America Great Again” or carrying messages of support for President Donald Trump, a Republican who lost the 2020 election to Biden, a Democrat.

The phrase originated in 2021, when people in the crowd at a NASCAR race chanted the obscenity directed at Biden and a television sports reporter said they were shouting “Let’s go, Brandon”, apparently believing they were chanting for driver Brandon Brown, who had just won a race.