Joe Dodson, Courthouse News Service
On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit upheld an injunction preventing immigration officials from more freely conducting “enforcement actions in places of worship,” according to Courthouse News Service. “The injunction, sought by groups of Quakers, Sikhs and the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, came after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security rescinded a longstanding policy of limiting immigration enforcement actions at or near houses of worship in January 2025.” In the Tuesday opinion, “Senior U.S. Circuit Judge Barbara Keenan agreed with the lower court that the new policy likely violates the plaintiffs’ rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and their First Amendment right to expressive association,” by, among other things, discouraging immigrants from attending worship. She rejected the government’s claim that faith groups needed to prove that the policy change caused an attendance decline, citing “the Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling in Department of Commerce v. New York,” on the first Trump administration’s effort to add a citizenship question to the census, to explain her conclusion. In that case, Keenan wrote, the majority held that the states, counties and cities challenging the question needed only to show that it was likely to “reduce participation and lead to an inaccurate population count” to have standing to bring their lawsuit.
