A federal civil rights lawsuit alleges the City of Dearborn, Michigan, spent thousands of public dollars celebrating Ramadan while ignoring a resident's repeated requests for equal recognition of Easter and Passover.
The American Freedom Law Center filed the suit Thursday on behalf of Margot Cleveland, a journalist with The Federalist who also lives in Dearborn. The defendants are the city itself and Democratic Mayor Abdullah Hammoud, the first Muslim and Arab American to lead Dearborn since his election in November 2021. The complaint alleges violations of the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, the First Amendment's free speech protections, and the Fourteenth Amendment's equal protection guarantee, a trifecta of constitutional claims rooted in what the lawsuit describes as preferential treatment of one faith over all others, Fox News Digital reported.
Cleveland began noticing "Ramadan Kareem" banners and large crescent-moon installations across the city in spring 2025. She emailed city officials requesting similar recognition for Christian and Jewish holy days. The response, her attorneys say, was silence, followed by hostility.
A FOIA request uncovered that Dearborn spent $1,500 on Ramadan banners and another $5,000 on a crescent-moon display, all with public money. The Dearborn Police Department, meanwhile, sold Ramadan-themed T-shirts. No comparable spending on Easter, Passover, or any Christian or Jewish observance appeared in the records.
Rather than scale back or offer equal treatment after Cleveland raised her concerns, the city doubled down. In February 2026, Dearborn expanded its Ramadan displays by commissioning crescent-and-star lights for municipal streetlights across the city. Hammoud framed the expansion as civic identity, not religious promotion.
"This initiative reflects who we are as a city."
That was the mayor's public statement on the new streetlight decorations. For Cleveland and her legal team, the timing said something different: a resident had asked for equal treatment, and the city responded by spending more on the very displays she had questioned.
Robert J. Muise, AFLC co-founder and senior counsel, laid out the legal theory in plain terms:
"The City of Dearborn spent taxpayer money to light up its streets and parks for Ramadan while stonewalling a resident who simply asked that Easter, Passover, and other Christian and Jewish holy days be treated the same way. That is a straightforward Establishment Clause violation, and the retaliation our client faced for speaking up about it only compounds the constitutional harm."
The Establishment Clause, the part of the First Amendment that bars government from favoring one religion over another, is the backbone of the case. Cleveland's attorneys argue that when a city uses tax dollars to celebrate one faith's holidays on public property while refusing to acknowledge others, the government has picked a side. That is precisely what the Constitution forbids.
The lawsuit does not rest on spending alone. Cleveland's attorneys pointed to a September 2025 exchange between Hammoud and Ted Barham, a Christian pastor, as evidence of a broader pattern of hostility toward non-Muslim residents who raise objections.
Barham had spoken at a Dearborn City Council meeting to raise concerns about the city's decision to rename a street after Usama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News. Siblani has been described as having made statements expressing support for Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Barham's objections drew a sharp response from the mayor.
Hammoud's words to the pastor, as cited in the lawsuit, were not subtle:
"And although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here. And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city... because you are not somebody who believes in coexistence."
Hammoud also called Barham a "bigot" and an "Islamophobe." The lawsuit alleges these remarks reflect a pattern: city officials treated residents who questioned the religious displays not as constituents exercising their rights but as enemies to be marginalized. Tensions at Dearborn City Council meetings have boiled over before, with at least one pastor publicly accusing the city of operating under religious law.
David Yerushalmi, another attorney on the case, described the city's conduct as a direct assault on equal citizenship:
"What makes this case especially troubling is that City officials, up to and including the Mayor, responded to a citizen's respectful request for equal treatment with silence, stonewalling, and outright hostility, including the Mayor's own words telling a Christian resident he is 'not welcome' in his own city. Our client is simply asking the City to treat Christians and Jews as equal citizens."
Cleveland has pushed back against any suggestion that she was looking for a confrontation. In an email to city officials, she made her position clear:
"I much prefer to ensure equality of faith traditions, as opposed to a challenge to the display."
She described herself as "a concerned resident who was ignored when I asked for the City to treat Christians and Jews equally." Her attorneys say the city's response went beyond indifference. The lawsuit alleges that in April, Cleveland was told she could attend a community meeting as a resident but not as a journalist, a restriction her legal team frames as retaliation for her public criticism.
The complaint also alleges Hammoud made a "snide comment" about residents who criticize the city on social media to monetize their posts. Muise told Fox News Digital that the pattern was unmistakable: "Despite the repeated requests, they treated her as if she were an outsider and not a full member of the political community."
Dearborn is home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the country. The 2020 Census counted 109,976 residents, with 54.5 percent reporting Middle Eastern or North African ancestry. An online directory cited in the lawsuit counts ten mosques within city limits. Michigan Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare, is lined with businesses featuring Arabic-script signs and Middle Eastern restaurants.
None of that is in dispute. What the lawsuit challenges is whether a city government, any city government, regardless of its demographics, can use public money to celebrate one religion's holidays while refusing to extend the same courtesy to others. The First Amendment does not contain a population-percentage exception to the Establishment Clause.
The case lands in the middle of a politically charged moment for Michigan. The state's 2026 U.S. Senate race pits Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim and the son of Egyptian immigrants, against Republican nominee Mike Rogers. El-Sayed has accused opponents of targeting him with anti-Muslim rhetoric. Republican and some Democratic critics have tied El-Sayed to streamer Hasan Piker, who said the U.S. was worse than al Qaeda "pound for pound, as far as the number of deaths" while arguing that U.S. military actions that kill civilians can amount to acts of terror.
The Dearborn lawsuit is not about the Senate race. But it lands in the same state, at the same time, and touches the same raw nerve: where the line falls between religious accommodation and government favoritism.
Fox News Digital reached out to Hammoud's office and Cleveland's attorneys for comment. The article did not include a response from the mayor or the city. The specific federal court where the lawsuit was filed, the case number, and the damages Cleveland is seeking have not been publicly disclosed in available reporting.
The city has not, as of the filing, offered any public explanation for why it spent taxpayer money on Ramadan displays while declining to recognize Easter or Passover. It has not explained why a resident who asked for equal treatment was allegedly barred from a community meeting in her capacity as a journalist. And it has not addressed the mayor's recorded comments telling a Christian pastor he was "not welcome" in his own city.
Equal treatment under the law is not a radical demand. It is the baseline promise of the Constitution, and a city that cannot meet it has no business spending a dime of anyone's taxes on religious displays at all.
