Supreme Court Declines to Hear T-Shirt Case
The Supreme Court denies certiorari in L.M. v. Town of Middleborough, Mass., 103 F.4th 854 (1st Cir. 2024).
Mahmoud v. Taylor: the Pride Puppy Case
by Chris Gilbert, Thompson & Horton LLP
On April 22, 2025, the Supreme Court heard oral argument in Mahmoud v. Taylor, a case from the Fourth Circuit about whether parents have a constitutional right to opt out of public school curriculum choices with which they disagree, in this case because of the parents’ religious beliefs.
At issue was the school district’s decision to use a series of LGBTQ-themed books, including a book called “Pride Puppy,” which (in the words of the court of appeals), depicts a family whose puppy gets lost amidst a LGBTQ-pride parade, with each page focused on a letter of the alphabet. The three- and four-year-old audience is invited to look for items such as “[drag] king,” “leather,” “lip ring,” “[drag] queen,” and “underwear.” See 102 F.4th 191, 197 (4th Cir. 2024). The parent plaintiffs claimed they were not challenging the school’s ability to adopt the curriculum…
To Disrupt or to Invade: Two New First Amendment Cases – Part 2 (T-shirts)
by Chris Gilbert, Thompson & Horton LLP
In a follow up to my recent post about book removals (see Butts, Farts and T-Shirts: Two New First Amendment Cases – Part 1 (books)), today we are discussing L.M. v. Town of Middleborough, Mass., --- F.4th ---- (1st Cir. 2024), a new case from the First Circuit (Massachusetts) involving a challenge to a t-shirt removal. The plaintiff, a middle school student, wore a t-shirt to school that read “There Are Only Two Genders.” He was told he could not wear the shirt under a provision of the dress code that prohibited clothing that “state[d], impl[ied] or depict[ed] speech or imagery that targets groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.” He then wore the same shirt with the words “Only Two” covered by a piece…
Butts, Farts and T-Shirts: Two New First Amendment Cases – Part 1 (books)
by Chris Gilbert, Thompson & Horton LLP
In the last ten days, two courts of appeals have issued extremely interesting First Amendment cases involving age-old situations –removing books from a library and banning t-shirts in public schools –that, for whatever reasons, haven’t been addressed by the circuit courts in a while. I’ll talk about the book removal case in Part 1, while Part 2 (later this week!) will talk about t-shirts.
In Little v. Llano County, --- F.4th ---- (5th Cir. 2024), the Fifth Circuit ruled that a public county library violated the First Amendment by removing seventeen (17) specific books, which addressed themes of sexuality and homosexuality; gender identity and dysphoria; and racism – and then a group of seven books that the parties and judges all referred to as “butt and fart” books, as typified by Larry the Farting Leprechaun.
The…
Because We Say They Don’t: Do the Title IX Regulations Violate the First Amendment?
by Chris Gilbert, Thompson & Horton LLP
Because it’s Title IX Week(s) here at Thompson & Horton, I decided to look and see how the new Title IX
regulations address the First Amendment. One of the Trump Department of Education’s (“DOE”) oft-stated concerns about pre-2020 Title IX jurisprudence was that the First Amendment rights of speakers to discuss Title IX-adjacent issues (or protest Title IX itself) were being violated, often by chilling protest speech on university campuses. There was therefore concern on the Right that the Biden DOE Title IX regulations would weaken the First Amendment rights of student parent and even teacher speakers. The Biden DOE assured commentators that they were taking these rights seriously.
And we now know that the new regulations do not violate the First Amendment – in part because they tell us they don’t, repeatedly, in the…
