An LGBTQ advocacy group is once again suing Loogootee, Indiana, claiming the city is ignoring a recent court decision ruling its actions unconstitutional and is pushing its festival out of the public square illegally.

The Southern Indiana city of 2,600 people and festival organizer Patoka Valley AIDS Community Action Group have fought for years over LGBTQ expression on city property, specifically where the annual PrideFest would be held.

The city had enacted a special events policy that would prevent the group from holding the festival at the public square downtown. The U.S. District Court of Southern Indiana handed the city a major defeat in August, ruling that the policy was too broad and violated organizers’ First Amendment rights.

Now, Loogootee has enacted another special events policy that mirrors several measures in the one that the court struck down. In response, the Indiana chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, which represents Pakota Valley, filed a new lawsuit against the policy and filed a motion alleging the city is disobeying court orders.

“Court orders must be complied with, and Loogootee, by enacting an ordinance that contains provisions enjoined by the Court, is in contempt of its lawful orders,” ACLU Indiana legal director Ken Falk said in a news release. “Moreover, the ordinance it has adopted continues Loogootee’s pattern of attempting to unconstitutionally restrict this celebration of the LGBTQ+ community.”

The new legal twist is the most recent development in what’s been a tense local culture war between the LGBTQ+ community seeking to publicly celebrate their identity and the strong, sometimes threatening, community pushback to their efforts.

Is Loogootee’s ‘new’ policy new?

Judge Richard L. Young listed three primary factors in his August ruling as to why he found Loogootee’s old policy unconstitutional: a 45-day event permit application deadline, small group thresholds, and event location limits. He also disagreed with the city’s health and safety reasoning for such rules.

Public institutions can legally establish restrictions on the time, place and manner of free expression as long as these restrictions are narrowly tailored.

Enacted Dec. 29, the new ordinance reuses the same language regarding the permit deadline and small groups but broadens the locations where an event can be held. Instead of limiting an event to one of two places, an event can now be held anywhere except within 240 feet of the town center’s fountain.

In its complaint, the ACLU argued that the “verbatim” measures and the new location restriction are all unconstitutional.

“The ‘new’ Ordinance is therefore ‘new’ in name only and, in reality, Loogootee has simply reenacted provisions that this Court has explicitly enjoined as unconstitutional,” the ACLU’s complaint reads.

Loogootee Mayor Brian Ader previously told IndyStar that the city planned to appeal the District Court’s decision, but an appeal was never filed.

The USA TODAY Network – Indiana’s coverage of First Amendment issues is funded through a collaboration between the Freedom Forum and Journalism Funding Partners.

Have a story to tell? Reach Cate Charron by email at ccharron@indystar.com, on X at @CateCharron or Signal at @cate.charron.28.

At some point in 2025, the FBI helped a local police agency foil an “ISIS-inspired plot” that at least one minor planned to carry out at an unnamed central Indiana school, according to an annual summary released by the federal agency’s Indianapolis field office on Jan. 5, 2026.

FBI agents “disrupted an ISIS-inspired plot targeting a Central Indiana high school through rapid coordination with local partners,” according to the news release.

Beyond that, the agency provided few details, sharing neither the name of the school involved nor the city or town in which the school was located. Nor did the agency clarify why the report characterized the plot as ISIS-inspired.

Chris Bavender, an FBI spokesperson, declined to answer an IndyStar request for additional information about the foiled attack, responding in an email that “this matter is ongoing.”

“Because the student had immediate access to firearms, FBI Indianapolis worked closely with the high school and our local law enforcement partner to remove all firearms from the house, and the student was expelled from school. DOJ did not file charges as the individual is a juvenile,” Bavender wrote.

Bavender did not provide any information on whether the student is facing charges in the juvenile justice system.

Although high schools in both Mooresville and Westfield were the site of high-profile threat investigations in 2025, neither matched the details mentioned in the FBI report.

In February 2025, Trinity Shockley, 18, was arrested after sharing plans for a Valentine’s Day school shooting at Mooresville High School. Though the investigation into Shockley began after the FBI received a tip, Shockley was not a juvenile at the time of her arrest. Nor did court documents filed in her case reference any connection to ISIS.

The Mooresville Police Department did not immediately respond on Jan. 5 to a request for comment.

In September 2025, Westfield High School was placed on lockdown after a “potential threat.” Billy Adams, the assistant chief of the Westfield Police Department, said there’s no indication the lockdown “had anything to do with an ISIS-inspired plot.”

IndyStar reached out on Jan. 5 to multiple police agencies in central Indiana, including the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, the Southport Police Department, the Speedway Police Department and the Beech Grove Police Department.

Officials for IMPD, Southport, and Speedway police said their agencies handled no such threat. Beech Grove’s police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ryan Murphy is the communities reporter for IndyStar. She can be reached at rhmurphy@indystar.com.