American city's ban on criticism of Islam headed for Supreme review

The Supreme Court is being asked to strike down special privileges the city of Sterling Heights, Michigan, created for a giant mosque that Muslims want to build in a residential neighborhood.

It would be tens of thousands of square feet and nearly six stories tall.

The American Freedom Law Center has filed a petition to the high court asking for review.

The case began when city officials bent their own rules to approve a mega-mosque proposed by Muslims. The residents of the surrounding neighborhood include many Chaldean Christians who escaped persecution from Muslims in their home country Iraq.

Seven residents sued, but lower courts sided with the mosque builders.

The civil-rights case against the city and its mayor contends the American Islamic Community Center proposed the mosque to "plant the flag" in a community of Christians who fled Iraq because they or family members were subjected to violence and abuse from ISIS.

The city initially rejected a proposal for a mosque in the residential neighborhood. Muslims then sued and the city complied with their demand to ignore local ordinances and regulations and permit the mosque through a consent agreement.

The civil-rights suit by residents followed.

AFLC said the decision to enter into the consent judgment was made during a city council meeting held in February 2017.

"During this public meeting," AFLC said, "the mayor enforced a content- and viewpoint-based speech restriction that prohibited private citizens, including our clients, from making any comments that the mayor deemed critical of Islam, in direct violation of the First Amendment!"

Subsequent court rulings were "fraught with egregious errors," the legal team said.

The neighbors' lawyers said, "It is well established that '[a] federal consent decree or settlement agreement cannot be a means for state officials to evade state law … municipalities may not waive or consent to a violation of their zoning laws, which are enacted for the benefit of the public.'

"Second, the city's prior restraint on plaintiffs' speech at the city council meeting, which was convened in part to discuss whether the city should enter into the challenged consent judgment, operated as an unlawful content- and viewpoint-based restriction in a public forum."

WND reported in 2017 a spokeswoman, Nahren Anweya, expressed the view of the Chaldean and Assyrian Christians in Sterling Heights.

"The mayor and the corrupted personal interests behind him have outraged a community which is comprised of the largest minority Assyrian/Chaldean Christians from Iraq," Anweya said. "This minority group consists of more than four generations of refugees and genocide victims under radical Islam."

The lawsuit alleges the city violated the U.S. Constitution in the following ways:

Adopting an ad-hoc rule that limited speakers wanting to address the consent judgment matter to just two minutes, thereby severely limiting a private citizen’s right to express his or her views at this public hearing, even though the city allowed other speakers addressing less controversial matters that evening to speak at great length.
Prohibiting certain views based on their content and viewpoint; that is, no one was permitted to mention religion or even hint at it when discussing the consent judgment matter, and certainly no one was permitted to make any statement that might be deemed critical of Islam.
Directing the city police to seize individuals and escort them out of the meeting if the mayor opposed what they were saying about the consent judgment matter.
Ordering the citizens out of the public meeting when it came time to actually vote on the consent judgment. This last action also violates the Michigan Open Meetings Act, according to the filing.

AFLC said its lawyers told the high court: "Review by this court is necessary because the 6th Circuit committed precedent-setting errors of exceptional public importance and issued an opinion that directly conflicts with this court's precedent and the well-established precedent of other federal courts."

The filing with the high court contends it would be wrong to allow such a precedent.

"If an application for special zoning couldn't get approval through the planning commission, the party seeking the special zoning could simply 'sue and settle,' relying on the fact that potentially costly and controversial litigation would force the city council to exercise this super-zoning-authority the city claims it possesses. The theoretical nuclear power plan could become a reality."

However, the rules are not set up that way, and the mosque should not have been approved.

In fact, the planning commission had voted unanimously against the mosque construction.

The city then reached a consent agreement that virtually ignored all the problems that had been cited.

Further, the city's decision to ban any comments during its discussion that were negative toward the mosque project violated the First Amendment, the case contends.

The council had imposed "a speech restriction that prohibited petitioners from expressing their 'good faith concerns' because the speech was deemed to be an attack on Islam.