A federal civil rights lawsuit accuses Dearborn, Michigan, and Mayor Abdullah Hammoud of spending public funds to promote Islam while refusing a Christian resident's requests for equal recognition of Easter and Passover.
A federal civil rights lawsuit filed Thursday accuses the city of Dearborn, Michigan, of spending taxpayer money to promote and celebrate Islam while refusing a Christian resident's repeated requests for equal recognition of Easter, Passover and other Christian and Jewish holy days.
The American Freedom Law Center (AFLC) filed the complaint on behalf of Margot Cleveland, a Dearborn resident and senior legal correspondent for The Federalist. The suit names the city and Democratic Mayor Abdullah Hammoud as defendants and claims violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments, including the Establishment Clause, free speech, equal protection and retaliation.
The case lands in one of the most closely watched battlegrounds of the 2026 midterms, and it puts a national spotlight back on a city that has drawn attention for years over how its leadership treats residents of minority faiths.
The complaint argues that Dearborn has used public funds and city property to commemorate Ramadan for years without taking comparable action for the holidays of any other religion.
Among the expenditures listed: $1,500 for "Ramadan Kareem" banners on public property, $5,000 for a large lighted crescent moon in a public park, crescent-and-star lights mounted on municipal streetlights, and Ramadan-themed T-shirts sold by the Dearborn Police Department.
Cleveland sent emails and raised the issue at city council meetings, asking officials not to stop celebrating Muslim holidays but to extend the same public recognition to Christian and Jewish holy days. According to the lawsuit, those requests were met with silence.
The complaint further alleges that Hammoud directed the city attorney to instruct council members not to respond to her, and that officials retaliated against her for speaking out. In April, she says, she was told she could attend a community meeting as a resident but not as a journalist.
"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," AFLC co-founder and senior counsel Robert J. Muise said. "That is a straightforward Establishment Clause violation, and the retaliation our client faced for speaking up about it only compounds the constitutional harm."
Cleveland began pressing the city in spring 2025, after noticing the banners and crescent moons displayed across Dearborn during Ramadan. A Freedom of Information Act request confirmed the dollar amounts behind the displays.
When she wrote to city officials, Cleveland stated her goal plainly. "I much prefer to ensure equality of faith traditions, as opposed to a challenge to the display," she wrote, according to the lawsuit.
Rather than equal treatment, she says the city expanded its Ramadan observances. In February 2026, Dearborn commissioned the crescent-and-star lights that now run along municipal streetlights across the city. "This initiative reflects who we are as a city," Hammoud said at the time.
Dearborn is home to one of the largest Arab American communities in the country. About 54.5 percent of its 109,976 residents reported Middle Eastern or North African ancestry in the 2020 Census, and ten mosques operate inside the city limits.
Lawyers for Cleveland point to a September 2025 confrontation between Hammoud and Christian pastor Ted Barham as evidence of what they describe as the city's hostility toward residents of other faiths.
Barham, speaking at a city council meeting, objected to the city's decision to rename a street after the publisher of The Arab American News, Usama Siblani. In the exchange that followed, Hammoud called the pastor a "bigot" and an "Islamophobe."
"And although you live here, I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here," Hammoud told Barham. "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."
The confrontation drew national coverage, and the same religious fault lines in Dearborn later spilled into Michigan's Senate campaign, when a local pastor's warning about Sharia law went viral on the trail.
"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," attorney David Yerushalmi said. "Our client is simply asking the City to treat Christians and Jews as equal citizens."
Michigan's open Senate seat is one of the most competitive races in the country. Democratic nominee Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim and the son of Egyptian immigrants, is facing Republican Mike Rogers, and religion has become a flashpoint in the contest.
El-Sayed endorsed Hammoud's 2021 mayoral campaign, and Hammoud has supported and donated to El-Sayed's political efforts. Republicans and some Democrats have criticized El-Sayed over his association with streamer Hasan Piker, while El-Sayed and his allies say opponents are targeting him with anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Cleveland says the fight is not about silencing anyone. "I don't have a problem with people of faith exercising their deeply held beliefs," she said. "I have a problem with people supporting or excusing terrorism and antisemitism and establishing a religion and discriminating against people of other faiths."
Hammoud's office did not respond to requests for comment on the filing. The city's next move is its formal response in federal court, where officials will have to answer each of the allegations in the complaint.
The central legal question is whether a municipality can spend public money to celebrate one faith's holy days while declining to recognize the holy days of others. Courts have repeatedly held that government may not prefer one religion over another, and the complaint argues Dearborn crossed that line with years of one-sided spending.
Watch for three things: how the city answers the complaint, whether the court grants any early relief, and whether the case becomes a live issue in Michigan's Senate race before November.
A federal civil rights lawsuit accuses Dearborn, Michigan, and Mayor Abdullah Hammoud of spending public funds to promote Islam while refusing a Christian resident's requests for equal recognition of Easter and Passover.
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