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Parent Gary Pruitt is suing the Grosse Pointe Public Schools System, which has banned him from school buildings after he posted a video in 2024 critical of a LGBTQ+ flag in a classroom and suggested "groomer teachers" were indoctrinating students.
The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Detroit claims the school violated his First Amendment right to free speech. The Detroit Free Press first reported on this suit.
The suit says Pruitt was attending his child's back-to-school night at Parcells Middle School on Mack Avenue in Grosse Pointe Woods in September 2024 when he saw LGBTQ+ flags in the school. He contacted the principal to ask what students were being taught and eventually was told to contact the school board, according to court filings.
After a written email exchange with a school board member, Pruitt posted a video of the flag in a classroom to a Facebook group for district parents and said it represented "radical programming being forced upon children by adults." He also asked: "Do you want to continue to let these groomer teachers push their distorted worldview upon your children?'"
He then got a notification from the district that he was banned from the buildings. The suit asks that the district lift the ban and provide financial compensation for stress and humiliation.
According to emails included in the court file, Pruitt wrote the school board on Sept. 16, 2024, saying he had contacted school officials and "In short, I was told there would not be much done about it."
He went on to write: "I have ZERO plans on dropping the issue as I have spoken with dozens of parents in the school district who also find it completely unacceptable that adults are trying to indoctrinate children with these symbols of homosexuality."
School Board member Valarie St. John responded the same day:
"I can assure you that none of our teachers have been forced to hang rainbow flags in their classrooms. If any teacher is indoctrinating children into any sexual orientation, please report that to the principal, as that would be inappropriate. However, if you are simply 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."
On Oct. 21, 2024, a letter from the Farmington Hills firm Collins & Blaha to Pruitt told him that a no-trespass order was in effect barring him from school buildings.
"While at the school, you filmed the inside of a classroom and a staff member sitting at her desk and posted the resulting video," said the letter signed by attorney John C. Kava. "In the video, you maintain a voiceover narrative where you ask: 'do you want to continue to let these groomer teachers push their distorted worldview upon your children?'"
The letter concludes by saying the district will revisit the no-trespass order at a later date, but until then he could be charged criminally if he violates it.
The School Board and Kava, the attorney who wrote the no-trespass letter to Pruitt, did not immediately return phone calls Tuesday from Deadline Detroit for comment.
