Massachusetts teen battling in court over t-shirt thrilled with President Trump’s ‘only two genders’

When President Donald Trump said in his inaugural speech, “There are only two genders,” it made Massachusetts teen Liam Morrison very happy, hoping it would help him in his legal battle against his Middleborough school district as the Supreme Court considers whether to take his case.

In his inaugural speech, Trump railed against “government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life.” And then added, “As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female.”

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Those are the exact words Morrison wore on a T-shirt two years ago that got him thrown out of school.

He told Fox this week, “It makes me feel that we definitely have a bit of a boost.”

Morrison, who’s now 14 and a freshman in high school, was 12 years old when he wore a T-shirt to school that said in bold letters, “There Are Only Two Genders.” The principal accused him of disrupting his Middleborough Middle School and of demeaning LGBTQ students. He was also banned from wearing its replacement that read, “There Are Censored Genders.”

His attorney, Tyson Langhofer, senior counsel with Alliance Defending Freedom, says this is a freedom of speech issue, that Liam expressed his beliefs about gender while the school encouraged students to celebrate Pride the same way.

“My client was punished for simply having that phrase on his shirt in a public school when he was responding to the school’s message of a very different perspective on sex,” Langhofer said.

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Trump also doubled down on his words by signing an executive order requiring the federal government to recognize only two sexes, male and female, and banning transgender service members.  

In a statement to Fox, the legal department of the LGBTQ+ advocacy group GLAAD said, “Every student has the right to attend public school without fear of bullying and harassment, and nothing in the executive order changes that. As the supreme court has recognized, public school officials have both the authority and obligation to provide a safe learning environment for all students, which is what the school did in this case.”

But Langhofer says this case is precedent-setting.

“It really comes down to the question of whether the government has the right to punish a seventh-grader for simply peacefully expressing a viewpoint that was different than what the school was expressing,” Langhofer said. “And we think that that law has been clearly established.”

Liam also sees the larger picture of his fight.

“I’m hoping … that this will be seen as not only just a one-court battle but also a sign for people to speak up about their own beliefs and also a recognition of that trying to say that a biological fact isn’t true is just absurd and people are willing to fight for it,” Liam said.

In a few weeks the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether to take up Liam’s case. Langhofer said it’s not clear what effect, if any, Trump’s executive order will have, and that the case ultimately rests on the weight of the First Amendment.