2 Middle School Brothers' 'Let's Go Brandon' Hoodie Case Goes to Supreme Court

Facts Matter

The Epoch Times

News, Politics, News Commentary

4.9 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 24 April 2026

⏱️ 8 minutes

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Summary

A few years ago, two brothers who went to middle school together came to class wearing hooded sweatshirts that said “Let’s Go Brandon” on them.

Now, most people know the origin of that phrase—and what it actually means—but here’s the question: In a school context, is it appropriate?

Schools naturally do have policies against profanity, and they can send children home for violating them.

However, the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” doesn’t actually contain profane words. If someone reads it, and they don’t happen to know the backstory, then it doesn’t even mean anything to them.

The school officials did not see it that way, though, and they ordered the brothers to remove the sweatshirts.

This then led to a lawsuit by the brothers' parents over free speech. Can school administrators exercise this much discretion when deciding whether something is vulgar?

This case appears to be far-reaching, as evidenced by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to take it up.

Let's go through the details together.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Moving along now to the topic of free speech, a few years ago, you had an interesting situation.
0:06.0	You had two brothers who went to middle school together over in Michigan.
0:09.2	They came to class one day, both wearing sweatshirts, hoodies, that said, let's go Brandon on the front.
0:15.6	Now, most people know the origin of that phrase and what it actually means. But if for some reason you don't know
0:21.7	where it comes from, I'll quickly tell you. Back in 2021, there was a NASCAR event over at Talladega
0:26.9	and a driver named Brandon Brown was getting interviewed by NBC Sports. And during that interview,
0:32.9	the crowd in the background was chanting F. Joe Biden. But the reporter, Kelly Stavis, she said that
0:38.8	the crowd was actually chanting, let's go Brandon. All of our partners, oh my God, it's just such
0:44.7	an unbelievable moment. Brandon, you also told me, as you can hear the chance from the crowd.
0:52.3	Let's go Brandon. Brandon, you told me you were going to kind of hang back those As you can hear the chance from the crowd.
0:55.4	Let's go Brandon.
1:01.8	Brandon, you told me you were going to kind of hang back those first two stages and just watch and learn what did you? And so after that interview, Let's Go Brandon became basically two things at once as a meme.
1:08.1	Firstly, it became a euphemism for the other thing that they were chanting.
1:11.9	It's a phrase that stands in for vulgarity. But then secondly, the phrase, let's go
1:17.3	Brandon, was actually a bit more than that. From a certain perspective, it became a satire
1:23.5	against the media itself. It was a commentary on how the media basically shapes and spins real-world
1:29.6	events and controls where the public has access to. The crowd in the background, they were clearly
1:35.3	chanting one thing, but the TV reporter in that clip, they said that they were chanting something else.
1:41.7	And only because it was televised that the viewers know the truth. So that's sort of
1:47.0	the surface level as well as the deeper level understanding of that particular meme. But with all
1:52.7	that being true, here's the question. In a school context, is it appropriate? Because schools do
1:59.2	naturally have policies against vulgarity and profanity,
	...

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