A new lawsuit challenging the city of Dearborn’s taxpayer-funded Ramadan displays shows why the government should stay out of the business of promoting religious holidays altogether.
A federal civil rights suit filed Sept. 17 against the Michigan city and Mayor Abdullah Hammoud alleges that Dearborn used public funds and property to celebrate Ramadan while failing to provide comparable recognition requested for Christian and Jewish holidays. The American Freedom Law Center filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Dearborn resident and The Federalist correspondent Margot Cleveland.
“This controversy shows the divisiveness caused by government bodies funding religious celebrations,” says Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Government neutrality doesn’t mean giving every religion its own taxpayer-funded decorations — it means leaving religious celebrations to private individuals at private events. Taxpayers should not be enlisted to promote any of them.”
Dearborn is the first Arab-majority city in the United States. (FFRF observes that state/church violations involving government promotion of religious celebrations on public property or with public funds typically favor Christianity, the majority religion in most American communities.) According to the complaint, Dearborn spent $1,500 on Ramadan banners and $5,000 on a large illuminated crescent-moon display in Peace Park in 2025. Cleveland says she subsequently asked city officials whether Easter and Passover would receive similar recognition and later sought recognition for additional Christian and Jewish holidays. The lawsuit alleges that those requests were ignored.
Dearborn expanded its Ramadan decorations in 2026, with illuminated crescent moons and stars installed on light poles in several commercial districts. Mayor Hammoud said of the decorations, “This initiative reflects who we are as a city.” He further described the displays as part of celebrating the community’s different traditions.
FFRF notes that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to America’s godless Constitution expressly bars the city from establishing a religion.
“There is no religious ‘we,’ contrary to the mayor’s assertion,” adds Gaylor. “All citizens of any religion or no religion are equal under the law in Dearborn and everywhere else in the United States.”
FFRF also notes, however, that the organization bringing the lawsuit is hardly a disinterested advocate for government neutrality toward religion. The American Freedom Law Center describes itself as the nation’s first “authentic Judeo-Christian” public interest law firm. Its founders, David Yerushalmi and Robert Muise, state that the organization exists to defend what it calls America’s “Judeo-Christian heritage and moral foundation.”
The center’s mission statement goes even further. The organization declares that America’s strength rests on its “Judeo-Christian heritage” and “faith and trust in God,” and says that it seeks a return to what it characterizes as America’s founding commitment to God. It also states that it “aggressively seeks to advance and defend our nation’s Judeo-Christian heritage” through litigation. Ironically, the lawsuit portraying Dearborn’s recognition of a Muslim holiday as unconstitutional seeks additional government recognition for Christian and Jewish religious observances.
The American Freedom Law Center has a lengthy history of litigation and advocacy focused specifically on Islam. Its own past press releases have described disputes in Dearborn using terms such as “Civilization Jihad” and “dhimmitization” and have accused officials of placating the city’s “sharia-faithful.” The Southern Poverty Law Center identifies center co-founder Yerushalmi as an anti-Muslim activist and describes him as a major figure behind state efforts to enact legislation targeting Islam.
FFRF remarks that this controversy demonstrates the inherent problem with the government getting into the religious-holiday business in the first place. The lawsuit shows the practical problems that arise once a government unwisely decides to promote a particular religious observance. There are myriad religious traditions, as well as a rapidly growing population of Americans — nearly one-third of adults — who practice no religion at all. Government officials should not decide which religious dates, symbols or traditions merit taxpayer support — because none of them should.
FFRF stresses an important distinction between government religious expression and citizens’ private religious expression, who are free to celebrate any religious traditions or none at all. Dearborn should stop its use of taxpayer resources for explicitly religious holiday displays rather than expanding the unconstitutional government promotion to additional religions — all of which turn nonbelievers into outsiders in their own community.
Gaylor advises Dearborn to heed the advice of Benjamin Franklin, who famously observed: “When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”
The answer to government-sponsored religion is not more government-sponsored religion, concludes the state/church watchdog. It is a government that stays out of religion altogether.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with about 41,000 members nationwide, including more than 1,100 members in Michigan. FFRF’s purposes are to defend the constitutional principle of separation between church and state, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.
