Two former officials from Hamtramck, Michigan, filed a lawsuit in federal court on Monday, alleging the city’s recent ban on flying Pride flags and certain other flags on city property is unconstitutional.
Cathy Stackpoole and Russ Gordon were both members of the Hamtramck human relations commission in June, when the Hamtramck city council approved a resolution banning the flying of LGBTQ+ Pride flags on city property, along with certain other flags.
The next month, Stackpoole and Gordon raised a Pride flag on a city-owned flagpole in violation of the new resolution. According to court documents, the councilmember Mohammed Hassan spotted the flag and called the police, who removed the flag. The city council subsequently fired Stackpoole and Gordon from the commission. They are suing for damages and to be reinstated, but they say their lawsuit is about much more.
“We want the gay Pride flag back up,” said Stackpoole, who identifies as queer. “We want the gays in this town to feel comfortable and welcome and supported. I’m worried about the kids in school … It’s important. People need to feel welcome.”
Supporters of the resolution, including the mayor of Hamtramck, Amer Ghalib, say the flag-banning resolution is “neutral” because the resolution text technically bans any flag other than “the American flag, the flag of the state of Michigan, the Hamtramck flag, the prisoner of war flag and the nations’ flags that represent the international character of our city”.
In a statement to the Guardian, Ghalib said the “neutrality resolution that we passed is legal and constitutional”.
“The city doesn’t discriminate, or give any preferential treatment to any group,” he continued. “The taxpayer government buildings or spaces belong to everyone and cannot be used by [a] specific group to promote special interest groups’ agenda.”
Notably, Ghalib and the Hamtramck city council only introduced the flag-banning resolution after a 2022 public dispute about whether the rainbow Pride flag could be flown on a public flagpole in town. Activists, including Stackpoole and Gordon, point to the city council debate around the passage of the resolution as evidence that it was targeting the Pride flag specifically.
According to videos of the city council meetings at the time, multiple speakers said they supported the flag-banning resolution on religious grounds. The councilmember Nayeem Choudhury ended the night’s debate by commenting: “We have to respect the religions. We have to respect the people around here: schools, mosques, churches.”
Marc Susselman, the attorney who filed the suit on behalf of Stackpoole and Gordon, argued “what they did violates three provisions of the US constitution”. He said the flag ban violates not only freedom of speech but also the establishment clause of the first amendment, which prohibits the government from making any law on religious grounds.
“The most serious issue is the establishment clause issue because it’s quite clear from the comments that were made by the councilmen during the council meeting to evaluate the resolution that one of their primary motives was their religious concerns,” Susselman said. “And it is absolutely unconstitutional for any political entity to enact legislation or a policy or ordinance or resolution in order to accommodate the religious views of the individuals who live in that political entity.”
Attacks on the rainbow Pride flag have grown around the country in the last 18 months. Since 2022, at least 45 communities and school districts across the country have passed regulations to ban the display of the rainbow Pride flag, according to the Gilbert Baker Foundation, which is named for the designer of the original flag.
The foundation is supporting the Hamtramck lawsuit through its national “Save the Rainbow Flag” effort. Until now, the organization has focused on supporting communities to oppose bans through rallies, public pressure and education about potential legal issues. But Charley Beal, the president of the foundation, said this is the first actual lawsuit filed.
Beal said this was about more than a single flag in a single town.
“Erasing the rainbow flag … is just the first step in a larger agenda of pushing gay people back into the closet. Symbolically, the rainbow flag was created as a beacon of hope to people who are living in the darkness of the closet, who would see that beacon of hope and then take that first brave step out into the light of freedom,” said Beal. “If it’s then taken away, the message is go back in the closet. You are a secondhand citizen.”
Stackpoole sees the issue similarly: “My brother died of Aids. I’ve been fighting this fight since 1969 … This is 2023 and we’re not going to go back in the closet again.”
