Lawsuit Challenges Dearborn’s Taxpayer-Funded Ramadan Displays

A lawsuit challenging the city of Dearborn, Michigan’s taxpayer-funded Ramadan displays argues that the government shouldn’t promote religious holidays. 

A federal civil rights suit filed Sept. 17 against the city of Dearborn and Mayor Abdullah Hammoud alleges that Dearborn used public funds and property to celebrate Ramadan while failing to provide comparable recognition requested for Christian and Jewish holidays. 

The American Freedom Law Center filed the case in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Dearborn resident Margot Cleveland, who writes for The Federalist. AFLC is joined by the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which aims to defend the separation between church and state. 

Dearborn is the first Arab-majority city in the United States. According to the complaint, Dearborn spent $1,500 on Ramadan banners and $5,000 on a large illuminated crescent-moon display in Peace Park in 2025. 

Cleveland says she subsequently asked city officials whether Easter and Passover would receive similar recognition and later sought recognition for additional Christian and Jewish holidays. The lawsuit alleges that those requests were ignored.

“This controversy shows the divisiveness caused by government bodies funding religious celebrations,” says Freedom From Religion Foundation Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “Government neutrality doesn’t mean giving every religion its own taxpayer-funded decorations — it means leaving religious celebrations to private individuals at private events. Taxpayers should not be enlisted to promote any of them.”

Dearborn expanded its Ramadan decorations in 2026, with illuminated crescent moons and stars installed on light poles in several commercial districts. 

Mayor Hammoud said of the decorations, “This initiative reflects who we are as a city.” He further described the displays as part of celebrating the community’s different traditions.

FFRF notes that the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to America’s godless Constitution expressly bars the city from establishing a religion.

“There is no religious ‘we,’ contrary to the mayor’s assertion,” Gaylor said. “All citizens of any religion or no religion are equal under the law in Dearborn and everywhere else in the United States.”

FFRF remarks that this controversy demonstrates the inherent problem with the government getting into the religious-holiday business in the first place. The lawsuit shows the practical problems that arise once a government decides to promote a particular religious observance. Americans practice various religions, and about 29 percent of adults practice no religion at all. 

The lawsuit argues that government officials should not decide which religious dates, symbols or traditions merit taxpayer support. 

Gaylor advises Dearborn to heed the advice of Benjamin Franklin, who famously observed: “When a religion is good, I conceive that it will support itself; and when it cannot support itself, and God does not take care to support, so that its professors are oblig’d to call for the help of the civil power, ’tis a sign, I apprehend, of its being a bad one.”

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