Supreme Court declines appeal over ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ school sweatshirt ban

The Supreme Court declined on Monday to take up an appeal from a Michigan woman and her two sons over a school district’s ban on sweatshirts bearing the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon,” leaving in place a lower court ruling that sided with the district. The students, identified in court papers only by the initials D.A. and X.A., were in sixth and eighth grade at Tri County Middle School in Michigan when they were told to remove the sweatshirts in 2022. The Associated Press reported their mother had bought the shirts for them for Christmas that year. [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 6 , 8 ]

CNN reported the students were asked to remove the sweatshirts in separate encounters, one with a teacher and one with an assistant principal. Newsweek identified the two school employees as assistant principal Andrew Buikema and teacher Wendy Bradford, who it said deemed the shirts a violation of the school’s profanity policy. The family sued the school district and two middle school employees in 2023, alleging violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments. [ 1 , 2 , 6 , 8 ]

A federal judge sided with the school district, finding that the school could prohibit the slogan because it amounted to vulgar speech. A split panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed. “In the schoolhouse, vulgarity trumps politics,” the appeals court majority wrote, adding that “the protection for political speech doesn’t give a student carte blanche to use vulgarity at school.” The New York Post reported the ruling came in October 2025 in a 2-1 decision written by Judge John Nalbandian. In dissent, Judge John Bush wrote that the decision “essentially gives school administrators boundless discretion” to censor political speech, according to The Hill. [ 1 , 2 , 6 ]

Lawyers for the family argued the apparel is protected political speech that cannot be censored so long as it is not disruptive, and that the phrase contains no swear words or sexual implications. Their petition argued the lower court decision “poses a stark threat to the First Amendment rights of millions of public school students,” Newsweek reported. The district urged the justices to reject the case, arguing that messages with lewd implications have no place in school even if they touch on political topics; CNN reported it was represented by veteran Supreme Court lawyer Lisa Blatt. The AP reported there was evidence some students wore clothing reading “Make America Great Again” or carrying messages supporting President Donald Trump. [ 1 , 3 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]

The phrase originated in 2021, when a crowd at a NASCAR race chanted an obscenity directed at Biden and a television sports reporter said they were calling out “Let’s Go, Brandon,” apparently believing they were cheering for driver Brandon Brown, who had just won a race. The New York Post identified the reporter as NBC’s Kelli Stavast and the race as the Xfinity Series’ Sparks 300 that October. [ 2 , 3 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]

The New York Post reported the court gave no reason for declining the appeal. CNN noted that a decision in the case, which had been expected next year, would have further defined the free-speech rights of students in school nearly six decades after the Supreme Court allowed students to wear black armbands protesting the Vietnam War in Tinker v. Des Moines. [ 2 , 6 ]