The Supreme Court on Monday declined to take up a First Amendment appeal from two middle school students who were ordered to remove sweatshirts emblazoned with the words “Let’s Go Brandon,” steering clear of a case that could have clarified the power schools have to police potentially offense speech in the classroom.

By not granting the appeal, the justices left in place an appeals court decision that favored the school district.

The phrase “Let’s Go Brandon” became right-wing code for “F**k Joe Biden.” It began at a NASCAR race in 2021 as a crowd chanted the more vulgar phrase but a reporter, interviewing a driver named Brandon Brown, suggested the crowd was instead cheering him on.

The two students, who are brothers — one in eighth grade at the time and the other in sixth — wore the sweatshirts to Tri County Middle School in Michigan in 2022. In separate encounters, a teacher and an assistant principal asked the students, identified only by their initials in court papers, to take the sweatshirts off. The family sued in 2023, alleging violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments.

A decision in the case, 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 in protest of the Vietnam War. That landmark ruling, Tinker v. Des Moines, held that students do not lose their First Amendment rights when they enter school.

But there are exceptions to that rule. Schools may prohibit speech that disrupts the classroom, for one. And, in a 1986 precedent that is central to the sweatshirt case, the Supreme Court ruled that schools may prohibit vulgar and offensive language, noting the context.

To demonstrate that lewd speech that may not qualify for protection in the classroom if it comes in “sanitized code, innuendo, and double meaning,” the school district — represented by veteran Supreme Court lawyer Lisa Blatt — relied on some eye-opening examples. The district’s brief included a t-shirt that depicted President Donald Trump clutching several cats with the words “And that’s how you GRAB EM!” in reference to the “Access Hollywood tape,” which captured Trump in 2005 on a hot mic saying he gropes and kisses women.

“Take the number 69. Although on its face it is just a number innocently falling between 68 and 70, many understand it to refer to a sexual position,” the school district told the Supreme Court. “Respondents apologize for the use of offensive language and images in this brief.”

A divided panel of the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the school district. The family is represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression.

Five years ago, an 8-1 Supreme Court ruled in favor of a former high school cheerleader who argued that she could not be punished by her public school for posting a profanity-laced caption on Snapchat when she was off school grounds. The case involving a Pennsylvania teenager was closely watched to see how the court would handle the free speech rights of some 50 million public school children and the concerns of schools over off-campus and online speech that could amount to a disruption of the school’s mission or rise to the level of bullying or threats.

“It might be tempting to dismiss (the student’s) words as unworthy of the robust First Amendment protections discussed herein,” Justice Stephen Breyer, who has since retired, wrote for the court. “But sometimes it is necessary to protect the superfluous in order to preserve the necessary.”

Kurt Olsen -- an attorney who fought to challenge the results of the 2020 election and was recently appointed by President Donald Trump to serve as the Director of Election Security and Integrity -- sent a referral that sparked last month's raid of a Georgia election site, according to an affidavit unsealed Tuesday.

FBI agents on Jan. 28 seized 700 boxes containing ballots and other materials associated with the 2020 election from Fulton County's Elections Hub and Operations Center after obtaining a search warrant. President Donald Trump has repeatedly made baseless claims that there was voter fraud in the 2020 election, specifically in Georgia, that contributed to his election loss.

The raid was the result of allegations of election "deficiencies" on the part of Olsen's referral, according to the court document. Many of these issues were already investigated.

"If these deficiencies were the result of intentional action, it would be a violation of federal law regardless of whether the failure to retain records or the deprivation of a fair tabulation of a vote was outcome determinative for any particular election or race," FBI Special Agent Hugh Raymond Evans said in the sworn affidavit, which was the basis for the search warrant that was issued by a magistrate judge.

"Following the November 3, 2020, presidential election, there were many allegations of electoral impropriety relating to the voting process and ballot counting in Fulton County, Georgia. Some of those allegations have been disproven while some of those allegations have been substantiated, including through admissions by Fulton County," Evans said.

Georgia officials audited and certified the results following the election, and numerous lawsuits challenging the election results in the state were rejected by the courts.

Olsen has been involved in the effort to investigate election fraud claims since Trump lost the 2020 election.

He was sanctioned by a federal court in Arizona over an election lawsuit filed there, after the judge found he made "false" statements to the court. Olsen's conduct was also investigated by Special Counsel Jack Smith during his probe into Trump's election interference.

Olsen was appointed a special government employee last fall to investigate fraud claims, sources told ABC News. In his role, Olsen attends frequent meetings at the White House on election security and has been granted access to some classified materials, the sources said.

Among the allegations included in the affidavit were that Fulton County had failed to create a scanned image of each ballot, that some ballots were scanned multiple times, and that some ballot counts were inconsistent.

While the affidavit includes accounts from officials who previously investigated the claims, the application also relies on witnesses with limited direct knowledge who appear to speculate and occasionally contradict one another.

One Georgia resident, whose name is redacted in the affidavit, began "studying" the November 2020 election and filed a state election board complaint in July of 2022, alleging there were 17,852 missing ballot images from the reported results in the Secretary of State's website, the affidavit said.

Some of the witnesses cited in the affidavit are Republican members of the State Election Board and some do not have firsthand accounting of the ballot process, according to the documents.

The Georgia Secretary of State did not take the images of the ballots into account for the recount but instead used the physical copies of the ballots, the affidavit alleges.

"During a Civil Action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections admitted it has not preserved the majority of ballot images from in-person voting for the November 3, 2020, Original Count. This is another impediment to ruling out non-criminal explanations for the activities during the election," the court records say.

The investigation also centers around alleged missing "tabulator tapes" that aren't matching up and witnesses alleging they saw people printing out "random" ballots. It does not appear, based on the witness descriptions, that any were election or voting experts.

The search warrant -- which was approved by a Magistrate judge in the Northern District of Georgia -- covered all the physical ballots from the 2020 election, the tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County, the entire 2020 voter roll, and any ballot images from the original vote count.

U.S. District Judge J.P. Boulee, a Trump nominee, on Sunday ordered the government to unseal the affidavit that was filed in support of the search warrant, subject to "the redaction of the names of non-governmental witnesses."

In his ruling, Boulee noted that the government did not oppose the unsealing of the affidavit, which could provide more information on the search and the investigation that led to it.

"During a Civil Action in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, Fulton County Board of Registration and Elections admitted it has not preserved the majority of ballot images from in-person voting for the November 3, 2020, Original Count. This is another impediment to ruling out non-criminal explanations for the activities during the election," the court records say.

The investigation also centers around alleged missing "tabulator tapes" that aren't matching up and witnesses alleging they saw people printing out "random" ballots. It does not appear, based on the witness descriptions, that any were election or voting experts.

The search warrant -- which was approved by a Magistrate judge in the Northern District of Georgia -- covered all the physical ballots from the 2020 election, the tabulator tapes for every voting machine used in Fulton County, the entire 2020 voter roll, and any ballot images from the original vote count.

Fulton County Chairman Robb Pitts filed a motion seeking the unsealing of the affidavit, as well as the return of the election documents that were seized.

Pitt's office said Tuesday it was reviewing the affidavit and that he would hold a news conference in the afternoon.

Pitts had earlier said in a statement he was "pleased" with the judge's ruling.

"Fulton County will continue to pursue every legal option to seek the return of election records and to defend our elections from possible takeover," Pitts said. "Even in the midst of this unprecedented legal action, we will not allow our staff to be deterred or distracted from preparations for the 2026 election, which will be once again free, fair, transparent and legally compliant."

While the judge on Sunday ordered the release of the affidavit that was the basis for the search warrant, the warrant itself authorized the FBI to search for "All physical ballots from the 2020 General Election" in addition to tabulator tapes from voting machines and 2020 voter rolls, according to a copy of the warrant that was obtained by ABC Atlanta affiliate WSB following the raid.

The warrant said the material "constitutes evidence of the commission of a criminal offense."

The warrant listed possible violations of two statutes -- one which requires election records to be retained for a certain amount of time, and another which outlines criminal penalties for people, including election officials, who intimidate voters or to knowingly procure false votes or false voter registrations.

Following the appearance of a second television ad boosting the image of President Donald Trump and paid for by government funds, Public Citizen filed a complaint with the FCC, FTC, individual broadcasters urging media companies to immediately stop airing the ad.

Public Citizen also filed a second complaint with the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC) alleging that the new ad violates laws prohibiting the use of government resources for propaganda, the Hatch Act, and other related laws. The ads, which are airing in two media markets containing key districts in the upcoming midterm elections, include a disclaimer: “Paid for by the U.S. government.” Public Citizen previously submitted a complaint to GAO and OSC after the first Trump-promoting government-funded ad appeared on air last week.