The local student who was banned from wearing a “two genders only” shirt to middle school receives support from 18 states and free speech groupsas they urge the Supreme Court to hear his case.

The lawyers for Middleboro student Liam Morrison recently filed a petition with the Supreme Court after a federal appeals court in Boston ruled against him earlier this year. Now, 18 states and freedom of speech advocate has filed a friend-of-the-court letter with the Supreme Court asking it to take the case.

Liam last year was banned by school officials from wearing a shirt to school that said “There are only two sexes.” The 7th grader then wore a shirt that read, “There are censored sexes,” and was again ordered to remove the shirt.

A U.S. District Judge previously ruled in favor of Middleboro school officials, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit subsequently affirmed the district court’s decision.

This prompted Liam’s attorneys with the Alliance Defending Freedom to ask the Supreme Court to review the case and rule that Nichols Middle School violated the First Amendment when it prevented the student from wearing his shirts to school.

“Our legal system is built on the truth that the government cannot silence any speaker simply because it disapproves of what they say,” ADF Senior Counsel and VP of US Litigation David Cortman said in a statement.

“We appreciate the many states and organizations that have joined us in urging the Supreme Court to take this critical free speech case,” the lawyer added.

The 18 states supporting Liam’s case are: Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, Utah, Virginia and West Virginia.

The multi-state brief was led by the states of South Carolina and West Virginia.

“… the First Circuit’s decision undermines one of the most important purposes of public education: to create civic virtues through the pursuit of truth — even when it’s inconvenient,” the multi-state letter said. “The court should grant the petition to restore that function.

“By silencing LM, the First Circuit created an anti-speech standard that — contrary to (Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District) — allows schools to restrict even quiet, passive displays of speech that cause no actual disruption,” the states say. added. “It split from other circuits on issues such as what facts a school must show to justify limiting student speech. And it effectively sanctioned viewpoint discrimination in public schools. If the decision below stands, public schools may become an imperfect forum of ideas, more pressing about avoiding offense than developing character.”

Middleboro’s school district celebrates Pride month every year, hanging Pride flags and sending the message that there are “an unlimited number of genders,” one of Liam’s lawyers had argued before the appeals court.

In response to the school’s view, Liam wore the controversial shirt at Nichols Middle School last year.

School officials responded by telling Liam to either remove his shirt or leave school for the day. Liam chose to miss the rest of his classes that day.

When the Middleboro principal pulled Liam out of class and told him he had to take off his shirt, the principal said they had received complaints about the words on his shirt — and that the words could make some students feel insecure.

“Middleborough applied a dress code, so it made a prediction regarding the disruptive effect of a particular means of expression and not of, say, a stray comment on a playground, a point made during discussion or debate, or a classroom inquiry,” the appeals court wrote in its verdict. “The prediction was about the predicted effect of a message that would be encountered by all students in its vicinity throughout the school day.”

School officials “knew of the serious nature of the struggles, including suicidal thoughts, that some of these students had experienced related to their treatment based on their gender identities by other students, and the effect these struggles could have on these students’ ability to learn,” the appeals court wrote .

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression is one of the free speech groups supporting Liam’s case.

“Here, instead of teaching students to discuss controversial topics, the school censored petitioner’s passive non-disruptive expression, subjectively fearing possible future psychological harm to other students,” FIRE wrote in its brief. “To ensure that our public elementary schools educate the next generation of Americans about the First Amendment in both word and deed, FIRE files this brief in support of the petitioner.”

“If the First Circuit’s broad extension of Tinker’s “invasion of the rights of others” is allowed to stand, school administrators across the country will use it to censor unpopular or dissenting views — miseducating students about their expressive rights in our pluralistic society,” FIRE added. “This Court should grant certiorari to reverse the First Circuit and affirm Tinker’s limitations on schools’ ability to censor non-disruptive student speech.”