A federal appeals court has upheld Hamtramck's ban on flying Pride flags from city-owned flagpoles, closing out a legal fight that began when two ousted city commissioners defied the policy in 2023 and got a police visit for their trouble. The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on August 21, 2026, that the city's flagpoles amount to government speech rather than a public forum, meaning the First Amendment claims brought against Hamtramck don't hold up.
The panel — Circuit Judges Karen Nelson Moore, Helene N. White, and Amul R. Thapar — found that Hamtramck's Resolution 2023-82 legally converted the flagpoles along Joseph Campau Avenue into a nonpublic forum, defeating the free speech claims while also finding no facial religious endorsement in the rule, according to FindLaw. As Michigan Advance reports, the ruling affirms a September 2025 dismissal by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, where Judge David M. Lawson had already found that the flagpoles are nonpublic government forums and that the city had a legitimate interest in avoiding conflicting political demands, per the same court record described by the Detroit Metro Times.
How the Flagpole Fight Began
The 18 city-owned flagpoles lining Joseph Campau Avenue in Hamtramck's historic district had been restored under a 2013 resolution that let the city's Human Relations Commission approve resident-requested banners — a decade-long practice under which the commission approved nearly every request except a Serbian flag, which it declined in order to avoid ethnic friction with local Bosnian residents, according to the Sixth Circuit opinion cited by FindLaw. That changed in 2023, when Hamtramck banned flying Pride and other group flags on city-owned flagpoles, and the city council later passed Resolution 2023-82 in July 2023, limiting flagpole displays to the American flag, the Michigan flag, and flags representing immigrant residents' native countries, per Michigan Advance. The council also barred religious, ethnic, racial, and political flags altogether under the ordinance.
Public sentiment leading up to the council's unanimous June 13, 2023 vote ran heavily against the restriction: 47 of 48 written comments submitted by residents opposed it, and 19 of the 37 people who spoke at the public hearing argued against the proposed ordinance, according to reporting cited by the CBS News Detroit coverage of the case. The council passed it anyway. Mayor Amer Ghalib had campaigned on the Pride flag ban issue back in 2021, per Michigan Advance, and Hamtramck that same year became the first city in the United States to elect an all-Muslim city council, with residents voting in that slate in November 2021.
A Pride Flag Raised, Then Removed the Same Day
Former Human Relations Commission members Russ Gordon and Cathy Stackpoole raised a Pride flag on a Joseph Campau Avenue flagpole on July 9, 2023. According to the Detroit Metro Times, mayor-summoned police removed the flag hours later that same day, and the city council followed up on July 11, 2023, by voting to strip the commission of its flagpole authority and dismiss both members from their posts. The flag's removal prompted protests from residents and elected officials, Michigan Advance reports, including Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, who participated in demonstrations over the ban.
Gordon and Stackpoole filed a lawsuit in November 2023 alleging the ban was unconstitutional and violated their freedom of speech, according to Michigan Advance. Many local Muslim residents had said the LGBTQ+ Pride flag ran counter to their religious beliefs, the outlet notes, underscoring the cultural tension at the center of the dispute in a city where, according to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2020-2024, 46.7% of residents — nearly 13,000 people — are foreign-born, the highest share of any municipality in Michigan and more than four times the statewide rate of 7.2%.
The Legal Doctrine Behind the Ruling
The Sixth Circuit's decision leaned on the 2022 U.S. Supreme Court precedent set in *Shurtleff v. City of Boston*, in which justices unanimously found that Boston violated free speech by rejecting a Christian flag under an open flagpole policy that created a private forum — while explicitly noting that cities remain free to change their policies going forward to restrict flagpoles strictly to government speech, according to the Harvard Law Review. That framework gave Hamtramck's appellate panel the legal basis to hold that a city may change the purpose of a forum previously used for private speech, as Michigan Advance reports.
Hamtramck's approach isn't unique. The city's flag policy mirrors restrictions adopted elsewhere, including Huntington Beach, California, which voted in February 2023 to limit its city flagpoles to government and military banners, a move that likewise ended private Pride flag displays under the government speech doctrine, according to FIRE.org. Throughout the litigation, Gordon and Stackpoole were represented by attorney Marc M. Susselman of Canton, Michigan, while the city, its council, and Mayor Ghalib were defended by Lindsey R. Johnson and Peter E. Doyle of Schenk & Bruetsch PLC in Detroit.
Mayor's Political Path Since the Ban
Mayor Ghalib, Hamtramck's first Yemeni-American mayor and a Democrat, drew national attention in September 2024 when he endorsed Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, citing shared conservative social values and foreign policy goals, as Hoodline previously reported. He was later nominated to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Kuwait, according to Michigan Advance, though that nomination stalled after statements he made about boycotting Israel surfaced during his confirmation hearing.
With the Sixth Circuit's ruling now affirming the lower court's dismissal, Gordon and Stackpoole's challenge to Hamtramck's flag policy appears to have reached the end of the legal line. Michigan Advance, part of the nonprofit States Newsroom network, first reported the appellate decision.
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