During the heated months of the COVID pandemic, the National School Board Association (NBSA) infamously sent a letter to then-President Joe Biden labeling concerned parents who were speaking out at school board meetings to protest Covid restrictions, mask and vaccine mandates, and leftist indoctrination in their children’s classrooms as “domestic terrorists.”
Biden’s Attorney General Merrick Garland responded by deploying federal law enforcement resources to investigate these parents for their alleged crimes.
The NBSA ultimately apologized for their letter, admitting that there was “no justification” for their language stigmatizing concerned parents as threats. But in Michigan, such covid-era policies appear to remain in effect.
Michigan father Gary Shane Pruitt is suing the Grosse Pointe school district in Michigan after he was banned from the campus of his child’s middle school for exposing pro-trans propaganda and materials displayed in the school’s hallways and classrooms.
Pruitt first became aware of the school’s emphasis on queer sexuality and gender ideology when he attended a “back to school night” at Parcells Middle School in the fall of 2024. According to the lawsuit filed on his behalf he “observed many rainbow/transgender pride flags on display at the school.”
Concerned about the impact these displays might have on impressionable adolescents and what other material students might be exposed to during school instruction, Pruitt contacted school officials to express his concerns but was told “that nothing was likely to change.”
Pruitt also contacted a member of the school board, Valerie St. John, who responded to his concerns with sarcastic derision. As the lawsuit filing recounts, St. John responded “if you are concerned that your child is seeing the colors of the rainbow, I would suggest sending them with tinted sunglasses so they aren’t subjected to the full spectrum.” She also seconded the school administration’s response that “nothing is likely to change.”
Thus stymied by the school administration, Pruitt made use of his First Amendment rights to call the attention of other parents to the queer and trans propaganda littering the halls of his child’s middle school. With the permission of school personnel, he entered the middle school after hours and created a video recording documenting the pro-trans flags and displays that he observed. He then posted that video with his own commentary on a Facebook page created for parents of students at Parcells Middle School.
The video is informative but measured in tone.
“Now when we first walk into this classroom, what do we see?” Pruitt narrates. “Boom!”
The video zooms in on a ‘progressive pride’ flag directly opposite the classroom door. The progressive pride flag features not only the typical rainbow associated with gay rights, but also a triangle intruding into the rainbow with the colors of the trans flag as well as black and brown sections to represent racial diversity.
“What a bold statement,” Pruitt states. “This flag is actually bigger than any American flag that we’ve seen in any of the classrooms at Parcells. It’s loud, it’s in your face. But of course they want to be loud about it. So what we’re going to do is give them the attention that they want.”
“First and foremost, we know it’s political,” Pruitt continues in a calm tone. “If you hang a flag like this up in a classroom, we know exactly what side of the political spectrum you fall on. Which makes it extremely divisive because at best, only fifty percent of the country aligns with this type of political ideology. So half of the students that walk around this school are not going to feel very included. In fact, this may be the most non-inclusive flag that they could hang up because it alienates over half of the student body.”
While the video Pruitt created is critical of the school administration and the gender ideology it appears to be promoting, it also does not threaten any member of the school community. Pruitt’s lawsuit describes the numerous steps he took to ensure that his recording was lawful and would not infringe on the privacy of students and staff at the school.
He obtained permission from school personnel in the office at Parcells Middle School to enter the school building after school hours on September 30, 2024, and he simply videotaped the flags that were on display at the school in various classrooms and hallways.
Children had already been released from school for the day and the hallways and classrooms were essentially empty.
A few teachers and individuals were present as he walked around, however, he obscured their identity in the video, and there was no way to identify any of the individuals in the video.
Mr. Pruitt provided his own voiceover of the video footage and expressed his constitutionally protected speech and criticized the Defendants over what he observed and his thoughts on those political issues.
He did not name in the video any individual he encountered during his time at the middle school
Despite this meticulous and lawful approach to recording the gender propaganda in his child’s school, the Grosse Pointe School District responded to the video by treating Pruitt as a threat. The school principal sent an email to parents assuring them that “we will have an increased police presence at the start of the school day at Parcells” and had Pruitt served by police with a “no trespass” order which banned him from setting foot onto school district property until further notice.
As the lawsuit filed on Pruitt’s behalf makes clear, the school district’s efforts to ban the father from his child’s school are retaliatory and baseless.
“Mr. Pruitt did nothing on the school grounds or campus that violated the cited policy, he did not use school property in any way, he did not cause any disruption while at the school, he did not harass, argue with, or intimidate anyone at the school, nor were there any school functions recorded,” the lawsuit declares.
If barring Pruitt from his child’s school weren’t harmful enough, the school district “further retaliated, alienated, humiliated, and stigmatized Mr. Pruitt by publicly posting his photograph in the middle school office and publicly stating in writing that he was a trespasser and not allowed on school property.”
Not only Pruitt but also his child suffered from the school district’s vindictiveness. “As a result of the posting of his picture and the statement, his child was stigmatized, ridiculed, and harassed by other children and individuals at the school,” the lawsuit describes.
The school district’s attempt to shame a parent for his legitimate concerns also sent a clear message to the community that further criticism was unwelcome. “Other parents, students, and community members were able to observe and see the posting of his photograph and the statement at the school office in an attempt to publicly shame him for exercising his constitutionally protected free speech rights,” the lawsuit explains. “The clear purpose and intent of Defendants’ actions described above was to intimidate Mr. Pruitt and others and to chill their speech if they disagreed with any action by GPPS.”
Pruitt appealed to the school district to have the “No Trespass” order lifted, but district officials refused to relent. As of the date of the lawsuit’s filing in March 2026, the “no trespass” order remains in effect. The days of concerned parents being treated as “domestic terrorists” are sadly not wholly in the past.