A teacher in the Little Miami, Ohio School District who was ordered to take down a pride flag he'd hung in his classroom failed in his effort to keep his identity private in a lawsuit he filed over the incident. Ironically, it appears his own motion doomed that effort.
For the past four years, the teacher has displayed a flag in his classroom that reads "Hate Has No Home Here" and bears several icons, including a rainbow Pride flag and transgender Pride flag. Apparently, all was well for most of those four years.
But, as the cliché goes, all good things must come to an end. In January 2025, the Ohio Assembly passed H.B. 8, the Ohio Parent's Bill of Rights. The statute provides parents the opportunity to review any instructional materials that include sexuality content, which is defined as "any oral or written instruction, presentation, image, or description of sexual concepts or gender ideology, provided in a classroom setting." In October 2025, the Little Miami School Board passed a policy that adopted the statute.
In February 2026, David Wallace, president of the School Board, asked the teacher to remove the flag, but the principal refused to order it removed. The teacher drafted an email defending the flag, and the Little Miami School District supported him. On February 25, 2026, the School Board voted 4-1 in favor of the flag's removal, pursuant to H.B. 8 and the district policy. The teacher complied with this vote and removed the flag. But as you may imagine, that is not the end of the story.
The teacher filed a civil case under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 seeking a declaratory judgment that the School District violated his First Amendment rights in ordering the flag's removal. But when he filed the complaint, the teacher also filed a Motion for Leave to Proceed Anonymously.
Federal Procedure Rule 10 requires that a complaint name all the parties. The reason for that rule is that trials are a public matter. The public has a right to know who is litigating in our federal courts. To overcome this requirement, a party seeking anonymity must convince the court that their privacy interests substantially outweigh the presumption of open judicial proceedings. In deciding the issue, a court looks at four factors: (1) whether the individuals "seeking anonymity are suing to challenge governmental activity;" (2) whether pursuit of the lawsuit "will compel the plaintiffs to disclose information of the utmost intimacy;' (3) whether the litigation compels plaintiffs to disclose an intention to violate the law, thereby risking criminal prosecution; and (4) whether the plaintiffs are children.
Here, factors three and four clearly don't apply. McIntyre isn't a child and he was not intending to violate the law. So the court focused on the first two factors. The teacher easily satisfied the first factor, as he was obviously challenging governmental activity. So the determinative factor was whether the lawsuit would compel the teacher to disclose information of the "utmost intimacy." And that's where the teacher got tripped up.
To support his motion, the teacher attached copies of online postings which demonstrated how he'd been "doxxed" following the incident. But those posts contained the teacher's name. In the court's view, granting the motion for anonymity would amount to a "legal fiction" because his identity was already in the public domain. And the teacher admitted that the online publications probably obtained the teacher's name and communications about the flag via public records requests.
It is hard to put toothpaste back in the tube. And this cliché ultimately doomed the teacher's motion.
