In 2015, progressive organizations across the Detroit area celebrated. Hamtramck, Michigan — a city of 22,000 people entirely surrounded by Detroit — had just elected the first Muslim-majority city council in United States history. LGBTQ+ advocacy groups were among those who cheered. The narrative wrote itself: a diverse coalition, a shared future, proof that inclusion worked.
On August 21, 2026, a federal appeals court closed that chapter.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld Hamtramck's ban on Pride flags from city-owned property. The city won. The LGBTQ+ plaintiffs who sued lost. And the Muslim council that progressive groups helped put in power turned out to govern exactly as Muslim voters expected — just not the way their progressive allies hoped.
Here's what happened.
By 2021, Hamtramck's demographic shift was complete. The city elected an all-Muslim city council — the first in American history. In June 2023, that council unanimously passed a resolution banning all non-governmental flags from city property: no religious flags, no ethnic flags, no political flags, no Pride flags. The U.S. flag, the Michigan state flag, the city flag, and flags representing the home countries of immigrant residents were allowed.
Everything else was out.
Two members of the city's Human Relations Commission — Russ Gordon and Cathy Stackpoole — decided to defy it. In July 2023, they raised a Pride flag on a city flagpole in open defiance of the new rules. The city removed the flag and removed them from their volunteer positions. They sued, claiming the ban violated the First Amendment's Free Speech Clause.
They lost at the district court level in September 2025. Judge David Lawson ruled the policy was viewpoint-neutral — it restricted all non-governmental flags equally, without favoring or disfavoring any particular group.
They appealed.
They lost again.
The Sixth Circuit ruled that city-owned flagpoles constitute government speech. The government has the same right as any speaker to choose what messages it conveys on its own property. The First Amendment protects citizens from government censorship. It doesn't require the government to carry everyone else's message on its own flagpoles.
The ban, it's worth noting, covers only government property. Residents and businesses can fly a Pride flag on private property without restriction. The ruling was about what the city government chooses to endorse — nothing else. Two federal courts have now agreed the city has that right.
Mayor Amer Ghalib was blunt with LGBTQ+ advocates pressing him on the policy: "You are the one who is causing all this tension, not us. You can't come and threaten us."
For years, the left built its coalition around intersectionality — the idea that Muslims, LGBTQ+ Americans, and progressive activists all share common cause and can govern together. Hamtramck is what happens when that coalition actually wins and the constituent groups start governing according to their own values.
Muslim voters in Hamtramck don't share the progressive position on LGBTQ+ public expression. They were clear about that before the election. They've governed accordingly ever since. Nobody paying attention should be surprised.
The progressives who celebrated the 2015 election as a historic diversity milestone didn't elect a coalition. They elected a community. And that community, once it held power, used it the way communities do — to reflect its own values.
That's how democracy works.
The left just expected it to work differently when they were the ones leading the celebration.
For more on this check out conservative commentator Tim Pool’s thoughts on the story…