The Supreme Court on Monday refused to hear an appeal from two Michigan middle school students ordered to remove “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts, leaving a lower-court ruling in place that treated the slogan as vulgar speech schools may ban.
Breitbart News reported that the justices gave no reason for the denial. The decision ends the case brought on behalf of the brothers at Tri County Middle School in Howard City, roughly 35 miles north of Grand Rapids.
What remains is a Sixth Circuit holding that politics lose when a school labels a message lewd. For parents who see the phrase as criticism of a president, not classroom obscenity, the result is a closed courthouse door.
School staff told the brothers to take the sweatshirts off. A teacher and an assistant principal treated the wording as barred under the dress code.
The mother’s 2023 lawsuit, filed with help from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, said the district violated her sons’ First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Court papers described the school’s stance: the slogan was “equivalent to the f-word.”
District counsel pushed a different frame. The shirts were barred as lewd under the dress code, the argument went, not because of politics. A district brief later urged the justices to accept that lewd messages do not belong in class even when they touch political topics.
The students’ names appear only by initials in the filings. The fight, though, was never only about two boys in Howard City. It tested whether schools can rebrand a political jab as vulgarity and then ban it.
In October 2025, the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals split 2-1. The majority held that the school could treat “Let’s Go Brandon” as vulgar speech even though the message was political.
Judge John Nalbandian, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion. Judge Karen Nelson Moore, appointed by President Bill Clinton, joined him.
Nalbandian put the holding in plain terms.
“In the schoolhouse, vulgarity trumps politics,”
Judge John Bush, also a Trump appointee, dissented. He warned that the majority had handed schools a tool that invites abuse.
“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,”
That split left the ban standing. Monday’s Supreme Court denial, docketed as 25-1143, left the Sixth Circuit result untouched.
FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick rejected the idea that presidential criticism becomes dirty talk the moment it reaches a middle-school hallway.
“Criticism of the president is core political speech protected by the First Amendment,”
He pressed the equal-treatment point schools often prefer to dodge.
“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.”
That is the heart of the dispute. If a school can redefine a political slogan as the f-word, viewpoint neutrality becomes optional. Disagreement gets laundered into “lewdness,” and the dress code does the rest.
Taxpayers fund these classrooms. Parents send children there under compulsory attendance rules. When officials police a anti-Biden jab while other contested messages sail through, the public has every right to ask whose speech counts.
The Supreme Court has faced sharp fights on other fronts as well, including a DHS battle over third-country deportations that put executive enforcement under a judicial microscope.
The slogan spread in fall 2021 after a NASCAR moment that millions recognized as media spin in real time.
NBC reporter Kelli Stavast interviewed driver Brandon Brown after the Xfinity Series’ Sparks 300. The crowd chanted “F, Joe Biden.” Stavast characterized the noise as cheers of “Let’s Go Brandon.”
The phrase stuck. It became a coded, widespread way to criticize the president without printing the f-word on a shirt. Schools that treat the code as the curse itself are not merely enforcing manners. They are collapsing political speech into obscenity by administrative say-so.
That is the move Bush flagged. Once “vulgarity” becomes a flexible label for messages officials dislike, the First Amendment’s schoolhouse limits stretch past Tinker-era disruption rules and into content preference.
Voters watching the Court on election rules saw a different posture when justices restored the Trump SAVE tool for state citizenship checks, a reminder that outcomes vary sharply by issue.
Monday’s denial was not the Court’s first recent pass on a student apparel fight.
In May 2025, the justices refused to hear a Massachusetts student’s challenge after a school barred a shirt reading “There are only two genders.” Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented from that refusal.
Two cases. Two denials. One theme: contested messages on sex, gender, and presidential criticism meet schoolhouse bans, and the high court stays out.
Alito and Thomas at least flagged the Massachusetts matter. No similar public dissent is described in the Michigan denial coverage. The lower-court rule stands, and school lawyers now have a Sixth Circuit line they can quote: vulgarity trumps politics.
Court watchers tracking process fights also saw the justices block a Trump administration push on mail-ballot standards ahead of the midterms, another high-stakes order that left conservatives arguing over when the bench intervenes and when it does not.
District attorneys asked the Court to bless a simple proposition: lewd messages stay out of class even when they brush against politics.
On paper, that sounds tidy. In practice, the “lewd” label did the heavy lifting. The slogan’s power came from the NBC episode and the public’s refusal to accept a soft revise of a crowd chant. Students wore a phrase that mocked both a president and a press corps caught sanitizing a jeer.
Call that vulgar if you want. Call it politics if you prefer accuracy. The Sixth Circuit majority chose vulgarity. The Supreme Court chose silence.
FIRE framed the stakes as viewpoint neutrality. A Biden sticker, a “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirt, and a gay pride T-shirt are not the same message. Under a serious First Amendment approach, schools do not get to green-light some and strip others by inventing a dress-code synonym for the f-word.
Public debate over the Court’s personnel and instincts has grown raw enough that even reported frustration with recent appointments has entered the wider argument about how often the bench protects contested speech.
Student speech is not unlimited. Schools may stop true disruption, true threats, and true obscenity. The Michigan case turned on whether “Let’s Go Brandon” is the last category by administrative rebranding.
Nalbandian’s majority said yes inside the schoolhouse. Bush said that path invites censorship dressed up as manners. Fitzpatrick said presidential criticism is core political speech. The Supreme Court said nothing and denied the petition.
Howard City is a small stage. The rule is not. Every district counsel reading the Sixth Circuit now has language to defend yanking apparel that needles the left’s preferred politicians, so long as someone is willing to call the message “lewd.”
The mother sued in 2023. The appeals court ruled in October 2025. The justices closed the file on a Monday without explanation. Along the way, a separate capital case showed the same Court willing to move when it lifted a stay clearing Tennessee to proceed with an execution, proof that silence is a choice, not a habit.
Lawful residents and parents who expect viewpoint-neutral rules in public schools are left with a circuit opinion that elevates a dress-code theory over transparent political speech. The students lost the sweatshirts. The public lost a chance at a clearer First Amendment line.
When schools can outlaw a political slogan by calling it dirty, the Constitution’s free-speech guarantee starts looking optional at the classroom door, and that is a bargain no free people should accept.
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