MARSHALL — More than a year after area residents packed school board meetings to speak out about a rainbow flag hung in the Marshall Middle School cafeteria, some residents are filing suit against the school district in federal court.

The plaintiffs in the lawsuit, a group called Marshall Concerned Citizens and Grant Blomberg, are demanding a jury trial. However, hearing dates have not been set in the case yet, according to court documents.

A civil complaint filed Thursday in Minnesota District Court claims the school district violated a student’s First Amendment rights, by taking away a petition he had started in support of removing a rainbow LGBT pride flag in the cafeteria. A display of flags, including U.S. and international flags and a rainbow flag representing lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students, was put up in the cafeteria in January 2020.

At the Feb. 18, 2020, Marshall School Board meeting, an eighth-grade student claimed he tried to circulate a petition about the rainbow flag, but the petition was taken away by middle school staff. The student also claimed that flag designs he and other students put on their lockers to represent them were taken down.

At the same meeting, attorney Bill Mohrman and the Rev. Don LeClere of the Evangelical Free Church in Marshall both called for Marshall Public Schools to develop a “viewpoint neutral” policy for displays. If the district did not, Mohrman said, it could face a lawsuit.

The civil complaint filed Thursday also claims the school district’s policies on flag displays are not “viewpoint neutral.”

In June, the Marshall School Board had issued a statement saying it would not be acting on community requests to add or remove flags from the display in the cafeteria. The school board’s statement said MPS also has a policy that allows students and staff the right to request to distribute or display non school-sponsored materials on school grounds. That means students and school staff have the ability to ask for additional flags to be included in the display, the statement said.

However, the statement also said the school district has the ability to review those requests on a case-by-case basis, and to approve or deny them.

The complaint filed Thursday was 79 pages long, and was filed together with hundreds of pages of additional documents including copies of school staff emails, and policy handbooks from Marshall schools. The complaint went into more detail on the background of the flag display project and the petition and flags allegedly taken from MMS students.

The lawsuit alleges that the flag of Myanmar was originally included in the cafeteria display, but the flag was removed to avoid potentially being offensive to Karen students.

In another section, the complaint alleges that on Jan. 8, 2020, a Marshall Middle School student wrote a seven-word petition, reading “Petition to take down LGTB (sic) Pride Flag.” The complaint alleges the petition didn’t violate school policies, because students were not handing out copies of the document or putting materials in mailboxes. The complaint alleges a teacher email from that day also didn’t suggest the student was seeking petition signatures during class.

The petition was later confiscated by a teacher and given to Marshall Middle School Principal Mary Kay Thomas, the complaint said.

The complaint also alleges that Thomas later met with the student who created the petition, and during their discussion suggested the student had “‘white supremacist’ views among other unflattering labels and characterizations.”

The complaint alleges that on Jan. 31, 2020, the student and a friend put up Christian flags on small flagpoles on the outside of their lockers, but the flags were taken down by a teacher. Later, another teacher helped the students tape the flags to the outside of their lockers instead. After that, the students were instructed to keep the flags inside their lockers, the complaint said.

The lawsuit is being brought not only against MPS, but also against Thomas, court documents said. Earlier this spring, MPS Superintendent Jeremy Williams said Thomas was placed on administrative pending an investigation. On Friday, Williams said he couldn’t comment on whether Thomas being on administrative leave was connected to the lawsuit.

As of Friday, Williams said he had not yet been formally notified of the lawsuit.