When I wrote about the Trump Administration’s rule change for ICE last week, I thought I was done for a while. But the world being what it is, and events being what they are, I was wrong.
(Quick reminder: the head of DHS revoked a rule that ICE agents couldn’t go into sensitive areas, including churches and schools, to try to apprehend undocumented immigrants.)
Today, several meetings of the Society of Friends (the Quakers) filed a lawsuit against the Trump Administration, arguing, among other things,[fn] that this rule change violated their First Amendment association and free exercise rights (and also their religious rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act).
I’d strongly recommend reading the complaint itself. It’s incredibly well-done, explaining both the law and how this move violates the law and, as a bonus, has a tremendously interesting description of Quaker practices and beliefs.
In summary, the religious liberty argument goes like this: Quakers believe that people can all experience God directly. Non-hierarchical, Quaker worship services are often silent until somebody feels moved to speak. They believe that a diversity of backgrounds and experiences helps bring the word of God to the community.
Even the threat of ICE agents coming into worship services will discourage some people—whether in the country legally or not!—from attending services. That, in turn, reduces the community’s ability to encounter the word of God. So even without arrests and ICE incursions, the Quakers’ assembly and exercise are harmed if ICE could enter their services (and the complaint also points out that, at least in a handful of cases, ICE agents have already taken advantage of the changed standard to target worship services).
They also point out that Quakers are pacifists, opposed to firearms and other weapons. Armed ICE agents entering a worship service would expressly violate those sincerely-held religious beliefs.
They further point out that, whether or not the government has a compelling need to apprehend undocumented immigrants, they have acknowledged that they don’t need to do so at worship services; in other words, this is not the least-harmful way to do it.
This is a really well-written, well-researched, and well-argued complaint. (Again, you should read it!) We’ll see how the government responds, but I have trouble imagining how the Quakers can lose here.
But that doesn’t mean there’s no room for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to participate! We have similar religious liberty concerns, but we get to them in different ways. Especially since we have non-public worship in the temple, we could make arguments that the Quakers, whose meetings are all public, can’t make. Moreover, we have, I think, a slightly different theological view of the place of community. I think the church should file its own suit, honestly, to let this be adjudicated as broadly and fulsomely as possible.
That said, the church generally doesn’t litigate these issues itself. It does, however, frequently file amicus briefs in the Supreme Court, and sometimes even at the appeals court level. And at the very least, when the Quakers’ case gets appealed, the church should make it a point to join in for the defense of the religious freedom to minister to all who want to hear the word of God.
[fn] The also make an Administrative Procedure Act argument that, for the administrative law nerds among us, is actually pretty cool, albeit not religion-focused. The short version is, when an administrative agency alters a long-standing rule, it has to explain the justification for altering the rule. Here, the Quaker meetings say, DHS just announced a rule change with no explanation or justification.
Photo by gordie jackson on Unsplash