AFLC Month in Review: May 2013

As America continues to endure the challenges of secular progressivism and radical Islam, AFLC remains vigilant in its mission to defend faith and freedom all across the Nation.  Indeed, May was another incredibly busy month for the American Freedom Law Center (AFLC), thanks to the generous support of patriotic Americans like you.  To that end, AFLC is pleased to report to you our significant accomplishments and case activity for the month of May.

  • On May 6, in a momentous First Amendment victory, the City of Dearborn, Michigan, issued an official apology and paid a large settlement for arresting several Christian missionaries who were peacefully preaching to Muslims at the Dearborn Arab International Festival in 2010.  AFLC represented Dr. Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, and Paul Rezkalla, who were thrown in jail on June 18, 2010, and charged with “breach of the peace” for their free speech activity.
  • On May 14, a Michigan federal judge turned the First Amendment on its head and dismissed a civil rights lawsuit brought by several Christian evangelists who were violently assaulted by a hostile Muslim mob while preaching at the Dearborn Arab festival last year.  In the “Faith & Freedom Report” video below, AFLC Senior Counsel Robert Muise discusses the judge’s ruling and its First Amendment implications.

  • On May 17, a federal judge entered a stipulated order preliminarily halting the enforcement of a City of Ann Arbor, Michigan ordinance that prohibited a pro-life advocate from displaying a “Free Ultrasound” sign in his vehicle, which he legally parks outside of a local Planned Parenthood.  The order will remain in effect during the pendency of AFLC’s civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the ordinance on behalf of the pro-lifer.
  • On May 20, AFLC filed its motion for summary judgment, accompanying memorandum of law, and hundreds of supporting documents in a D.C. federal court in defense of the Center for Security Policy (CSP) and several of its employees, who were sued by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) for working on a documentary designed to expose CAIR’s Muslim Brotherhood-Hamas ties and other illegal activities.  As demonstrated by AFLC’s court filings, the documentary was undertaken legally and quite properly.
  • On May 24, a federal judge granted AFLC’s motion for a preliminary injunction, halting the Obama administration from enforcing the HHS “contraception” mandate against Johnson Welded Products, Inc., a family owned and operated company in Ohio, and its President and principal owner, Ms. Lilli Johnson, until an appellate decision is reached in a similar case.  Johnson objects to the mandate based upon her sincerely held religious beliefs.
  • On May 28, AFLC filed a petition for a writ of certiorari (i.e., request for review) in the United States Supreme Court on behalf of Crystal Dixon, a former human resources administrator at the University of Toledo who was fired in 2008 for expressing her personal, Christian viewpoint on homosexuality in an op-ed published in the local newspaper.  On December 17, 2012, a three-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit dismissed Dixon’s case and sided with the lower court, which ruled that the University’s “diversity” interests trumped Dixon’s First Amendment rights.
  • On May 29, AFLC filed a motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by a Muslim (and former Jordanian government official) against several national security experts after he was fired as the Multicultural Relations Officer of the Ohio Department of Homeland Security for falsifying his background.  AFLC, along with local co-counsel, is representing the experts, who specialize on the Muslim Brotherhood and the sharia-driven threat of stealth jihad to America.
  • Litigation continues in AFLC’s legal challenge to the refusal of a Detroit-area transportation authority—the Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART)—to display a religious freedom advertisement on its buses.  On May 9 and May 13, AFLC Senior Counsel Robert Muise defended the depositions of the bus ad’s sponsors, Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer.  On May 21, Muise took the deposition of an official who testified on behalf of SMART.
  • And the list goes on . . . .