WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear an appeal brought by two Michigan middle school students who were barred from wearing “Let’s Go Brandon” sweatshirts because of the slogan’s vulgar anti-Joe Biden meaning.
The justices left intact an October 2025 decision from the Cincinnati-based Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. That court ruled the school could prohibit the sweatshirts because administrators reasonably viewed the slogan as vulgar speech.
The Supreme Court did not explain its decision not to take up the case.
The phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” gained widespread popularity in the fall of 2021 as a coded substitute for “F— Joe Biden.” The slogan emerged after NBC reporter Kelli Stavast mistakenly interpreted a profane chant from the crowd as “Let’s Go Brandon” while interviewing NASCAR driver Brandon Brown after that October’s Xfinity Series Sparks 300.
“Here, the school administrators reasonably interpreted the ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ slogan as being vulgar speech that ‘a school may categorically prohibit’ despite its political message,” the Sixth Circuit wrote in a 2-1 ruling. “Requesting that students remove clothing with that slogan didn’t violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments.”
“In the schoolhouse, vulgarity trumps politics,” Judge John Nalbandian, an appointee of President Trump, wrote for the majority.
Judge John Bush, another Trump appointee, dissented. “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 — something the First Amendment flatly forbids,” he wrote.
The boys’ mother sued the school district in 2023, arguing that the ban violated her sons’ First Amendment rights.
According to an attorney for Tri County Middle School in Howard City, roughly 35 miles north of Grand Rapids, the school prohibited the sweatshirts because their message violated the dress code, not because it conveyed a political viewpoint.
The lawsuit said an assistant principal and a teacher told the brothers to remove the sweatshirts because officials considered the slogan “equivalent to the f-word.”
The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free speech advocacy and legal organization, filed the lawsuit on the mother’s behalf.
“Criticism of the president is core political speech protected by the First Amendment,” FIRE attorney Conor Fitzpatrick said in a statement at the time. “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.”
