photo by: Kim Callahan/Journal-World

Michael Eravi shields his face from a camera as he is given a citation for trespassing at the Lawrence Public Library Friday, June 27, 2025.

A frequent public commenter who has filed multiple lawsuits against government entities claiming that his constitutional rights have been violated will have to pay the cost of litigation and reasonable attorney’s fees after his suit against a public official in Elk County was thrown out by a judge.

Those costs and fees, according to the defendant in that lawsuit, total $14,518.

The defendant is Elk County Attorney Jill Gillett, who was sued by Lawrence resident Michael Eravi, a self-described citizen journalist, for abuse of process and malicious prosecution after Gillett filed a Protection From Stalking petition against Eravi.

Eravi and Gillett came into conflict last fall when Eravi criticized Gillett’s prosecution of a criminal case in Elk County. Gillett alleged that Eravi followed her with a camera, filming her and interrupting her at meetings, along with sending her alarming emails. A magistrate judge did not ultimately grant a PFS order, finding some of Eravi’s conduct to be constitutionally protected and Gillett’s petition to be unsupported by the evidence.

But failing to get a PFS order does not mean that Gillett’s actions lacked probable cause to begin with, and Eravi was unable to prove that the request for a PFS was malicious, the district judge presiding over Eravi’s subsequent lawsuit found, leading to the claim being “stricken and dismissed in its entirety.”

The judge also rejected Eravi’s abuse of process claim, finding, among other things, that Gillett was entitled to prosecutorial immunity and that her actions were “legitimate.”

The judge also found that the state’s Public Speech Protection Act, also known as Kansas’ Anti-SLAPP statute, applied to the malicious prosecution claim, which shifted the burden to the plaintiff to show a likelihood of prevailing on the merits. The court found that Eravi had made no such showing and noted that under Anti-SLAPP the court was required to award Gillett the cost of litigation and reasonable attorney fees.

On Thursday, Gillett’s attorneys submitted documents calculating those costs at $14,518 — a request that the court will consider and rule on.

A day later, Eravi, who earlier this year was trespassed from the Lawrence Public library, received a citation from police after coming back to the library on Friday and protesting with a sign next to its front door, prompting library officials to again request his removal.

In addition to the Elk County lawsuit, two federal lawsuits by Eravi against Lawrence city officials and police officers have also been dismissed, as the Journal-World has reported.

Eravi, who has been accused of harassing and disruptive behavior at public meetings for years now, has also been permanently banned from Lawrence school district property and has been informed that he will be arrested if he shows up there again.

That ban stems from an April 28 school board meeting when Eravi waited for board members to exit district headquarters, positioned himself next to a board member’s car and made “harassing and threatening statements toward board members,” according to a letter from Superintendent Jeanice Swift.

Prior to the parking lot incident, the letter indicated that Eravi had approached the board members and yelled obscenities at them at the conclusion of their meeting.

Eravi has long publicly argued that the First Amendment gives him the right to call people obscene names at public meetings and to engage in other behavior contrary to meeting decorum. However, a federal judge in March ruled, in regard to another plaintiff with a similar stance, that the city’s requirements that comments be germane to city business and comply with a decorum standard were “reasonable and viewpoint-neutral speech restrictions permissible in a limited public forum.”