Hey, it’s almost like we hinted that this post was coming, or something…
Regular readers probably know Margot Cleveland, if only for her intrepid efforts to cover the entirety of the absolutely insane Judicial Insurrection against Donald Trump 2.0 and the Supreme Court itself. On the Federalist’s website, her official biography states the following:
Margot Cleveland is an investigative journalist and legal analyst and serves as The Federalist’s senior legal correspondent. Margot’s work has been published at The Wall Street Journal, The American Spectator, the New Criterion, National Review Online, Townhall.com, the Daily Signal, USA Today, and the Detroit Free Press. She is also a regular guest on nationally syndicated radio programs and on Fox News, Fox Business, and Newsmax. Cleveland is a lawyer and a graduate of the Notre Dame Law School, where she earned the Hoynes Prize—the law school’s highest honor. She later served for nearly 25 years as a permanent law clerk for a federal appellate judge on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Cleveland is a former full-time university faculty member and now teaches as an adjunct from time to time. Cleveland is also of counsel for the New Civil Liberties Alliance.
What we learned in the last few days is that she also lives in the infamous Dearborn, Michigan and now she is suing the city and its mayor for religious discrimination.
2/ @JoyPullmann has details @FDRLST https://t.co/OsnRswVMiO
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) September 17, 2026
4/ And a copy of the complaint is available here: https://t.co/ocXhp0uezM
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) September 17, 2026
5/ And if I could be so bold as to ask you to consider donating to support the American Freedom Law Center which is representing me, even if it's only $25, it would help fund the lawsuit. Link here: https://t.co/Et6ObSMg8H
— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) September 17, 2026
Recommended
Well, readers, we would recommend you get a VIP subscription with us, first. But after that, it seems like a worthy cause.
(You can't blame a man for trying.)
And if you don’t want to read the complaint, Blue Lives Matter provides a pretty good summary:
Dearborn, Michigan, is in federal court for preferential treatment for Muslims and discrimination against Christians and Jews!!
— Blue Lives Matter (@bluelivesmtr) September 21, 2026
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Margot Cleveland filed Sept. 17, 2026, in the Eastern District of Michigan. The American Freedom Law Center is on the complaint.
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Mayor Abdullah… pic.twitter.com/7flm9ohXHr
The cut off text:
Mayor Abdullah Hammoud is a named defendant. Cleveland has lived in the city since 2007 and writes as senior legal correspondent for The Federalist.
She first saw ‘Ramadan Kareem’ banners downtown in April 2025 while picking up a pizza. A lighted crescent moon sat in Peace Park on city property.
A FOIA pull showed $1,500 in public money for the banners. Another $5,000 went to the park display.
Dearborn Police sold Ramadan shirts with the department emblem. Cleveland emailed the city attorney on April 6, 2025, and asked that Easter and Passover get the same treatment.
Nobody answered that email. AFLC later wrote that Dearborn had become ‘a hostile place for Christians and Jews.’
In February 2026 the city hung crescent-and-star lights on municipal street lamps and called it the first of its kind in Dearborn. Hammoud said the display ‘reflects who we are as a city.’
The complaint says officials then added still more lighted Ramadan signs after she kept asking. She told city council on April 14, 2026, that she was not asking them to drop Muslim holidays.
The suit also quotes Hammoud at a 2025 council meeting telling pastor Ted Barham he was ‘not welcome’ in Dearborn. Hammoud said the city would throw a parade if Barham left.
Barham had criticized a street named for Osama Siblani. The complaint alleges First Amendment retaliation and an Establishment Clause preference for Islam.
It also alleges a Fourteenth Amendment equal-protection claim. Dearborn is a majority Arab American city of more than 100,000.
To break that down a little bit (without a full Deep Dive), she is saying the way they retaliated against her violated her freedom of speech and since the speech concerned her faith, her freedom of religion. If you retaliate a person for speaking, then you are infringing that freedom of expression.
Freedom of religion is also paired with something called the Establishment Clause. To quote the relevant parts of the First Amendment, it says:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof
While the plain text of the First Amendment only applies to Congress on its face, it has been applied to the judiciary and the executive branch on the theory that they couldn’t establish a religion, or prohibit the free exercise of it without Congressional approval, and Congress cannot provide such approval. And it is applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, as we explained here.
So the second part of that is about free exercise and while there can be a great deal debate over how for that right extends (does a member of a Native American religion have the right to use peyote if it is subject to a general prohibition?), it is beyond debate that otherwise peaceful expression about faith cannot be prohibited. But what is this stuff about ‘establishment?’
Well, the narrowest interpretation is that it means there cannot be a federal government church. There is a Church of England, but there cannot be a Church of America. The more expansive interpretation over time is that the government cannot promote one religion over another, which is more or less what the Supreme Court says today. This doesn’t stop the government from acknowledging religion, but Cleveland’s point is that if they acknowledge Islamic holidays, they must acknowledge the others.
As for the ‘Equal Protection’ claim, that involves part of the Fourteenth Amendment that prohibits various kinds of discrimination, as we explained here. We do think it is correct to say discrimination against people based on their faith violates this clause. But it also violates the First Amendment, too, so it strikes us as redundant.
Cleveland also points us toward this discussion on Fox News:
Honestly, if this author was a Muslim, we would be infuriated at the current Muslim leadership. Muslims got to be the majority in an entire city, and what do they with that power? Name streets after terrorists, and discriminate against Jews and Christians. There are many people who believe that Islam is incompatible with American values. This kind of behavior is helping those people to make that case.
So, you know, maybe the leaders in Dearborn should cut it out, lawsuit or not. That’s certainly what we would tell them if we represented them.
Finally, the phrase in the title ‘Cleveland Rocks!’ is actually a reference to this rock song they used as the theme song for The Drew Carey Show, rendering that phrase a truly terrible pun:
That show was a pretty good example of the ‘Jerry Sienfeld made a hit show, so let’s hire a random standup comedian to head up a sitcom’ genre that bloomed in the 1990s.
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