Ohio teacher sues over removal of ‘Hate Has No Home Here’ poster

An Ohio teacher is suing his school district, arguing that his First Amendment rights were violated when he was ordered to remove an anti-hate poster.

John Doe – whose name has been redacted in the suit due to fears of harm and retaliation – is a history teacher at Little Miami Schools in southwest Ohio’s Warren County. According to the lawsuit, he hung a “Hate Has No Home Here” poster in his classroom in August 2022 containing heart-shape symbols including “the American flag, a peace sign, a rainbow Pride flag, and a transgender Pride flag.”

His classroom also features an American flag, a Cincinnati Bengals flag, a “COEXIST” poster with religious symbols from around the world, framed photographs of presidents and civil rights leaders with quotes, a Rosie the Riveter poster, a Batman poster, a “Christmas Story” poster and pictures of his family.

Doe also said that the school has a competition during the holidays for Christmas decorations on classroom doors and that human resources personnel encouraged teachers to put up family photos.

Poster removal

Doe said he was approached by the school’s principal in September 2025 and told that school board president David Wallace came to his classroom and took photos of the “Hate Has No Home Here” poster.

He was then told by the principal in February 2026 that Wallace had requested, via the superintendent, that the poster be removed – ostensibly on the grounds that the LGBTQ+ flags constituted “sexuality content.” The principal refused to order the poster be removed.

In February 2026, the superintendent wrote a memo stating that a reasonable person would not conclude the poster’s primary purpose was to “prompt discussion, provide instruction or solicit student engagement on sexual concepts or gender ideology.”

In a meeting with the superintendent on February 4, the teacher said he was told that if the board voted to remove the poster, his failure to take it off the wall would constitute insubordination.

The Little Miami School Board voted to remove the poster on February 25, concluding that the poster did indeed qualify as “sexuality content” due to the presence of the LGBTQ+ flags. Board members also made explicitly anti-LGBTQ+ comments at that meeting, including Dan Smith, who subsequently resigned his school board position following .

Facing “disciplinary action, up to and including termination,” Doe ultimately removed the poster.

Doe filed the lawsuit seeking an injunction against the poster’s removal and a declaration that banning the “Hate Has No Home Here” is a violation of his First and 14th Amendment rights to free speech and equal protection.

Joshua Adam Engel, an attorney representing John Doe, said that his client just wants every student in his class to feel safe and respected and that the Little Miami School Board has turned “a simple message of kindness into a fight about free speech.”

“A teacher hung a flag in his classroom for four years saying every student deserves to be treated with respect — and nobody had a problem with it until some school board members decided to make it one,” Engel said in a statement provided to The Buckeye Flame. “The Constitution demands more; school board members cannot silence speech simply because it disagrees with the message.”

Engel further said that this case is also about protecting teachers.

“Teachers do not leave their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse door, and the goal of this lawsuit is to protect the rights of every teacher to speak out on important issues that affect their students,” he said.

Anti-LGBTQ+ animus

The suit further alleges that Little Miami School Board members have a documented history of anti-LGBTQ+ animus.

According to the lawsuit, some teachers placed rainbow “Safe Space” stickers on their classroom doors prior to summer 2023. Little Miami’s former superintendent allegedly had the stickers removed before the beginning of the 2023 school year.

Several weeks later, after the start of the 2023 school year, some parents complained to school board members about the availability of the novel “Heartstopper” by Alice Oseman at a Scholastic Book Fair.

The young adult novel features a gay character.

The suit alleges that Wallace – then a candidate for school board – wrote a letter to board members “asking for a stop to all Scholastic Book Fairs in the district until a committee could evaluate all the titles to be made available.”

In October, the district also removed some books from a vending machine operated by Little Miami’s Parent Teacher Organization (PTO).

The suit alleges the books were removed as part of an internal audit, checking the collections for LGBTQ+ characters or “views of LGTBQ rights that were contrary to the views of certain School Board Members.”

The Buckeye Flame is a newsroom dedicated to amplifying the voices of LGBTQ+ Ohioans to support community and civic empowerment through the creation of engaging content that chronicles their triumphs, struggles, and lived experiences.