Schools both private and public have outlawed a wide range of clothing in recent years: gang apparel, anti-Bush T-shirts, camouflage clothes and, most recently, shirts bearing the American flag (for fear of inflaming tensions over the immigration debate). But on Thursday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco voted 2-1 to back a public school's argument that it was entitled to ask a student to remove a shirt bearing the message "Homosexuality is shameful."

In a bid to ease ongoing tensions between gay and straight students at Poway High School, the judges ruled that it was acceptable for administrators to ban clothing with slogans that are deemed hurtful, according to a Reuters report. But it was the deep pop-culture mining of the dissenting judge that really pointed out how contentious the debate was.

Writing for the majority, Judge Stephen Reinhardt backed up a lower court's decision denying an injunction against the school and said schools may bar slogans believed to be hurtful. Students "who may be injured by verbal assaults on the basis of a core identifying characteristic such as race, religion or sexual orientation, have a right to be free from such attacks while on school campuses," Reinhardt wrote, according to a copy of the ruling. "The demeaning of young gay and lesbian students in a school environment is detrimental not only to their psychological health and well-being, but also to their educational development."

The student who wore the shirt had sued over the issue, claiming the school's revised dress code violated his free speech, religious freedom and due process rights.

The dissenting judge, Alex Kozinski, warned that the policy could put a lid on campus dissent and set a troubling precedent. "The types of speech that could be banned by the school authorities under the Poway High School hate policy are practically without limit," wrote Kozinski, who in his dissent also called laughable the argument that the shirt could disrupt classroom activity and take kids "off task." He said the image of high schools students bored or distracted during lessons is no better than a cliché, and as evidence he referenced everything from "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" to "Veronica Mars" to "The O.C."

Indeed, he wrote that "politics, sports, movies, music and personal matters are ordinary subjects of discourse in high school corridors and lunch rooms," again tipping his pop-culture hand by referencing "The Breakfast Club," "Clueless" and "Mean Girls" as examples of the spirited debate that goes on in high schools.

"Any speech code that has at its heart avoiding offense to others gives anyone with a thin skin a heckler's veto — something the Supreme Court has not approved in the past," he wrote.

A spokesperson for the school could not be reached for comment at press time.