The Supreme Court has declined to hear the case of a Massachusetts middle school student who claimed his free speech rights were violated when he was prohibited from wearing a T-shirt stating, “There are only two genders.”

The justices, over two dissents, effectively upheld a lower court ruling that allows schools to enforce dress codes aimed at protecting students from what they deem “hate speech” or bullying. The decision not to hear the case follows three months of internal deliberation and sidesteps a possibly divisive culture war issue concerning policies designed to protect LGBTQ+ youth.

justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, filed a 14-page dissent, arguing that the case raises a critical question about the extent to which public schools can suppress student speech based on viewpoint. Justice Alito stated the case “presented an issue of great importance for our nation’s youth: whether public schools may suppress student speech because it expresses a viewpoint the schools disfavor.”

The student, Liam Morrison, a 7th grader, wore the T-shirt in response to his school’s promotion of Pride Month, during which students were encouraged to wear rainbow colors and posters advocated for the protection of transgender and gender non-conforming students.

According to reports, two years ago, Liam Morrison wore the black T-shirt to school. A teacher reported him to the principal, who asked him to change his shirt. When he returned with the word “censored” taped over the original message, he was once again asked to change.

The legal challenge asked the Supreme Court to consider whether school officials can restrict the free expression of some students to shield others from messages they might find offensive or hurtful.

This decision comes shortly after the court agreed to hear a separate free speech case in march, challenging laws in California and 21 other states that ban licensed counselors from using “conversion therapy” with minors.

Both cases were brought by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF),a Christian legal group that has previously won free-speech cases involving a cake maker and a website designer who refused to participate in same-sex weddings,citing religious objections.

Additionally, the court recently heard arguments from religious parents in Montgomery County, Md., seeking the right to opt their children out of classrooms where “LGBTQ-inclusive” storybooks are used.

the T-shirt case also follows President Trump’s executive order that the U.S. government will “recognize two sexes, male and female,” not “an ever-shifting concept of self-assessed gender identity.”

While the Supreme Court has not yet ruled directly on the intersection of T-shirts and the 1st Amendment, lower courts have generally upheld the authority of schools to impose limits.

For example, in 2006, the 9th Circuit Court upheld school officials at Poway High School in San Diego who prohibited a student from wearing a T-shirt that said “Homosexuality is shameful.” The court reasoned that while students have the right to express controversial opinions, they cannot make “derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students’ minority status such as race, religion and sexual orientation.”

Other court rulings have supported schools’ decisions to prohibit students from wearing Confederate flags on T-shirts.

In the Massachusetts case, Liam Morrison’s father argued that his son’s T-shirt was not directed at any particular person but addressed a “hot political topic.”

School officials defended their actions by citing their anti-bullying policy and a dress code that prohibits clothing that states, implies, or depicts hate speech or imagery targeting groups based on race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, or any other classification.

Lawyers for the ADF argued that the school violated liam morrison’s 1st Amendment rights. However, a federal judge in Boston ruled in favor of the school, stating that the T-shirt “invaded the rights of the other students…to a safe and secure educational environment.”

The 1st Circuit Court agreed,noting that schools can limit student expression if they fear it will cause a disruption or “poison the atmosphere” at school.

One of the Supreme Court’s landmark rulings on student rights came during the vietnam War era. In 1969,in Tinker vs. Monks, the Warren Court sided with students who wore black armbands to protest the war, asserting that students do not “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate….For school officials to justify prohibition of a particular expression of opinion, [they] must be able to show that its action was caused by something more than a mere desire to avoid the discomfort and unpleasantness that always accompany an unpopular viewpoint.”

The court held that symbolic protest should be allowed as long as it does not cause a “considerable disruption of or material interference with school activities.”

Attorneys for Liam Morrison argued that his case met that standard.

David Cortman, an ADF attorney in the case of L.M vs.Town of Middleborough, said, “This case isn’t about T-shirts.Its about public school telling a middle-schooler that he isn’t allowed to express a view that it differs from their own.”