Justin Caiazzo, 29, has filed a lawsuit against Passaic County Community College, professor Gladys Harris, and dean Peter Hynes, alleging his First Amendment rights were violated during a July 2021 online class when Harris spotted a Trump flag in his background and branded him a “racist.”
The Lake Hiawatha student was attending a business statistics course via Zoom when Harris allegedly halted the entire session upon noticing the “Trump 2020” banner hanging on his bedroom wall. According to the Sept. 23 complaint filed in New Jersey Superior Court, Harris demanded Caiazzo remove the flag immediately.
When Caiazzo, who says he had not raised any political topics during class, asked what was wrong with the flag, Harris called it “offensive,” the lawsuit claims. She then allegedly labeled him a “racist” in front of his classmates and removed him from the Zoom call when he refused to take down the pro-MAGA banner.
The confrontation, Caiazzo alleges, poisoned his standing in the course. During the following class session, Harris allegedly permitted other students to speak over him while refusing to let him participate. After that session, Caiazzo reached out to Harris seeking tutoring options or a chance to discuss the tense exchange. She reportedly directed him to “tutor.com.”
Concerned the situation would derail his education, Caiazzo escalated his complaint to other school officials, including Hynes. College officials launched an internal probe but ultimately sided with Harris, court papers state, blaming Caiazzo and determining his “political expression was disfavored.” The investigation yielded no “meaningful relief” — no transfer to another class, no option for a “no credit” grade.
“[He] ultimately withdrew from the class at his own expense rather than continue under conditions regarded as hostile, unfair, unconstitutional and academically untenable,” the complaint states.
The forced withdrawal carried steep consequences. Caiazzo was unable to graduate because dropping the course left him short of requirements, according to his attorney, Marc Calello.
“Our client was wronged on many levels,” Calello said in a statement to The Post.
Calello framed the case as emblematic of a broader pattern in higher education. “There’s a difference between an opinion and a fact… Regardless of what side you’re on,” he said.
Caiazzo is seeking unspecified damages for educational harm, emotional distress, and humiliation. The college, Hynes, and Harris did not respond to requests for comment.
The incident unfolded during the height of pandemic-era remote learning, when students’ home environments became visible to instructors and classmates in ways that rarely occurred in traditional classrooms. Political displays that might have gone unnoticed in a campus setting were suddenly on full view, and the boundaries between personal space and educational space collapsed into the rectangular frame of a webcam.
The lawsuit lands amid ongoing national debates over free expression on college campuses, though Caiazzo’s specific claims center on a single statistics course and a single flag that, by his account, he never raised for discussion. What began as background scenery in a Lake Hiawatha bedroom became, according to the complaint, the focal point of a classroom meltdown that cost him a degree.