A former Passaic County Community College student has filed a lawsuit claiming a professor branded him a racist and pushed him out of an online business statistics class after he refused to remove a Trump 2020 flag from his Zoom background during the summer of 2021. Justin Caiazzo, who lives in the Lake Hiawatha section of Parsippany, says the fallout ultimately forced him to withdraw from the course and finish it elsewhere.
According to the lawsuit, which Caiazzo filed in state court in Morris County on September 23, professor Gladys Harris told him to take down the flag during class and then called him a racist in front of his classmates when he declined, as reported by NJ.com. Caiazzo alleges he refused to remove the flag and was removed from that day's class as a result. He is suing Passaic County Community College, claiming his free speech was violated and that he faced retaliation.
The dispute didn't end there, per the lawsuit. When Caiazzo logged on for the next class session on July 13, 2021, he alleges Harris excluded him from the discussion entirely, never called on him even as he repeatedly raised his hand, and instead told him to go on tutor.com. He says Harris then refused to discuss the incident any further with him.
Administrators Gave Him an Ultimatum
Caiazzo brought his concerns to college administrators, who granted him a hearing, according to the suit. But the outcome offered him little relief: administrators told him his only options were to remain in the class as-is or accept an F. Caiazzo withdrew from the course rather than accept either option, and later completed the same statistics class at William Paterson University in Wayne instead.
Passaic County Community College did not respond to a request for comment, per the same NJ.com report. The college is a public two-year institution chartered in 1968 that opened in 1971, headquartered in Paterson with academic centers also in Passaic and Wanaque. It is a federally designated Minority Serving Institution, with Hispanic or Latino students making up 64.2% of its student body, according to Data USA.
Why Public Colleges Face a High Bar
Because PCCC is a public institution, its administrators and faculty act under color of state law and are bound by the First Amendment, according to a legal explainer from Thai Nguyen Law. Under the landmark 1969 Supreme Court ruling in Tinker v. Des Moines, public educational institutions cannot censor passive political symbols unless they cause a material and substantial disruption to class operations, according to the U.S. Courts educational resource on the case. Courts have held that student expression cannot be banned simply because instructors or classmates find a political symbol offensive, absent concrete evidence of actual disruption, per the same U.S. Courts materials.
That threshold has proven difficult for New Jersey colleges to clear before. In August 2020, Stockton University in Galloway faced widespread First Amendment scrutiny after charging a doctoral student with conduct violations over a Trump Zoom background, a dispute that ended with the university dropping the primary charges following pressure from civil rights advocates, as New Jersey 101.5 reported at the time.
Potential Damages Under State Law
Caiazzo is seeking damages and attorney's fees in his suit. Under the New Jersey Civil Rights Act, individuals who suffer a deprivation of First Amendment or state constitutional rights by someone acting under color of state law can bring a civil action for compensatory damages, injunctive relief, and attorney's fees, according to the New Jersey Appellate Law Blog. It's a state-level mirror of federal Section 1983 claims, and it isn't the first time it has been invoked against a New Jersey community college — a 2018 suit against Essex County College relied on the same statute after an adjunct professor was terminated following a controversial political television appearance, per a summary from Costello & Silverman.
Notably, PCCC's own emergency and conduct guidelines state that nothing in its anti-harassment procedures should be construed to limit the legitimate exercise of free speech or infringe on academic freedom. Since leaving PCCC, Caiazzo has landed on William Paterson University's Dean's List for both the Spring 2025 and Fall 2025 semesters, according to the university's own announcements.
