photo by: Chris Conde/Journal-World

Michael Eravi appears at a hearing on March 19, 2025, in Douglas County District Court.

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

That’s according to a purported letter from Lawrence Superintendent Jeanice Swift on May 1 addressed to the man, Michael Eravi, telling him that henceforth he can attend school board meetings only virtually. The letter, whose authorship the district has neither confirmed nor denied, despite repeated requests, followed an incident at the April 28 school board meeting when Eravi waited for board members to exit district headquarters at 110 McDonald Drive, positioned himself next to a board member’s car and made “harassing and threatening statements toward board members,” according to the letter.

“This behavior occurred in the presence of other district staff members who were in the area at the time, creating an unsafe and threatening environment for all who were present,” the letter said.

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.

A Lawrence police officer trespassed Eravi immediately after Monday’s disturbance in the parking lot.

Three days later the letter went out, saying, “In the future, your presence at any Lawrence Public Schools location will result in an arrest.”

The ban comes on the heels of a 60-day period in which Eravi was reportedly banned from attending school board meetings in person. That suspension was preceded by an incident at the Feb. 10 board meeting when Eravi engaged in an approximately 30-minute standoff with board president Kelly Jones, during which he disobeyed board rules for public commenting, used foul language, called officials crude names, demanded that they “shut up!” and refused to either sit down or leave after being warned about his conduct. Eravi also interjected with “points of order,” a parliamentary procedure for board members, not spectators, and refused to stand at the lectern and speak into a microphone, instead wandering around the meeting room, claiming that a ceiling-mounted screen was too “risky” to stand beneath. At times, as officials spoke, he gave them the middle finger.

Aside from decorum breaches, public officials have said that the disruptions, sometimes accompanied by people being hectored, filmed and followed to their cars, have a chilling effect on civic engagement. In summer 2023, Lawrence City Manager Craig Owens notified Eravi that he was banned for 60 days from attending City Commission meetings in person after exhibiting “threatening and harassing behavior,” including telling two commissioners that he knew where they lived. Owens said in the letter that the ban came after Eravi had been asked to leave or was removed from meetings “no less than five times.”

Eravi, who has also been banned from the Lawrence Public Library for disruptive behavior, is often accompanied by Justin Spiehs, of Johnson County, who has been banned in recent years from attending school board meetings in person, and is frequently muted when he comments virtually due to rule violations. The two men frequently attend other local government meetings at the city and county to ridicule public officials with vulgar language – including in Eravi’s case, use of the N-word and gendered slurs, and in Spiehs’ case insulting remarks about women’s physical appearance.

Eravi, who considers himself a “citizen journalist,” has sued — and frequently threatens to sue — over what he considers violations of his civil rights. His federal lawsuits against the city have both been thrown out by judges.

Eravi is facing at least two criminal cases. One is a pending felony interference with law enforcement case, in which he refused to leave an area during a police standoff where officers said it was dangerous and distracting for him to be, and the other is a charge of misdemeanor battery on a law enforcement officer in connection with an incident last fall when police cleared out a homeless camp on the south bank of the Kansas River.