How Trump’s Executive Order on Immigration Violates Religious Freedom Laws
The ACLU and other lawyers are filing complaints across the country against Trump’s executive order on immigration. Yet these lawsuits do not always bring the strongest—or any—religious freedom claims. That’s true even though a federal court has already found a “strong likelihood” of an Establishment Clause violation in Trump’s order. There are good reasons to support such a ruling: Trump initially advertised his immigration policy as a “shutdown of Muslims,” even though he now asserts that it is a simple security measure, and he recently characterized its religion accommodation as a protection for Christians. Four theories under constitutional and statutory religious freedom provisions are available to lawyers and judges who are assessing the immigration order. (We bracket here questions of whether these rights apply to individuals in various immigration statuses, and questions of whether such people, or anyone else, has standing to bring these claims.)