A diverse coalition of faith groups sued the Trump administration Feb. 9 to challenge the legality and religiously narrow makeup of its Religious Liberty Commission.
President Donald Trump established the commission in 2025 by executive order “to defend the religious liberty of all Americans,” but then appointed Franklin Graham, Eric Metaxas, Paula White and other Christian nationalists dedicated to the creation and maintenance of a “Judeo-Christian” nation.
Paul Raushenbush
Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush v. Donald Trump was filed in federal district court in New York seeking a declaration the board was unlawfully founded and constituted and to require any documents and recommendations it produces to be made public.
The groups noted separately that the commission is all Christian except for one Orthodox Jewish rabbi: “No members of the commission represent other minority religions, such as Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism or Sikhism or nonreligious Americans, and the commission’s meetings have expressly adopted and promoted purportedly Judeo-Christian ideals and viewpoints, with members routinely expressing their views during meetings that the United States is a Judeo-Christian or Christian nation.”
The action was brought by Interfaith Alliance, Muslims for Progressive Values, Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and Hindus For Human Rights. They are represented by Democracy Forward and Americans United for Separation of Church and State.
The lawsuit was filed the same day the commission met at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C.
According to the Freedom from Religion Foundation, the commission lived up to its one-sided interpretation of faith in America during what was its fifth gathering.
“Throughout the meeting, commissioners and invited witnesses focused on ideological grievances, culture-war narratives and foreign policy disputes while paying no attention to the growing influence of white Christian nationalism, the erosion of state/church separation, or the ways ‘religious liberty’ rhetoric is being used to justify discrimination and government entanglement with religion,” the foundation reported.
“The commission has been tasked with approaching religious liberty through a narrow, sectarian lens.”
“The overall tone underscored longstanding concerns that the commission has been tasked with approaching religious liberty through a narrow, sectarian lens rather than a genuinely pluralistic and constitutional one.”
It’s exactly what the lawsuit is meant to change, plaintiffs said.
“Religious freedom for some is religious freedom for none,” said Raushenbush, president of Interfaith Alliance and a Baptist minister. “The government has no right to pick and choose which religious beliefs to promote and which to marginalize.”
“As a Muslim American organization, we have seen firsthand how elevating a singular religion above others, especially in a country as religiously diverse as the United States, leads to the oppression and possible persecution of minority faiths,” said Ani Zonneveld, President of Muslims for Progressive Values.
Ria Chakrabarty
“By stacking this Religious Liberty Commission with a narrow set of voices and hiding the commission’s work from the public eye, the Trump administration is evading the transparency and balance that federal law requires,” said Ria Chakrabarty, senior policy director of Hindus for Human Rights.
Besides Rabbi Meir Soloveichik, a professor at Yeshiva University, other Christian board members picked by Trump include Catholic Cardinal Timothy Dolan and First Liberty Institute President Kelly Shackelford.
The commission is chaired by right-wing Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, in part for his efforts to place “In God We Trust” in the state Senate chamber, according to his commission bio. Ex-officio members include Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner, a Southern Baptist pastor.
The commission’s advisory board consists of four rabbis along with Jack Graham, pastor of Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, where Turner previously was on staff; Springfield, Ill. Catholic Bishop Thomas Paprocki; and Archbishop Elpidophoros, leader of the Greek Orthodox Church in the United States.
With regard to the commission’s makeup, the lawsuit seeks to force the administration to follow the Federal Advisory Commission Act, or FACA, a 1972 law against the use of secretive advisory boards by the executive branch.
The statute requires any advisory group to be publicly transparent, operate in the public interest, to be fairly balanced among points of view and to be free of inappropriate influence by special interests.
Skye Perryman
Yet the makeup of the Religious Liberty Commission exemplifies the ongoing attack against pluralism and religious liberty, Democracy Forward President Skye Perryman said.
“The Trump-Vance administration’s Religious Liberty Commission is not about religious liberty; it is about pursuing a culture of Christian nationalism that seeks to divide and isolate people across our nation,” she said. “The fatally flawed way this commission was assembled makes clear that the outcome isn’t just un-American, it’s against the law.”
The bottom line is that the religious favoritism of the commission cannot be squared with the constitutional principle of church-state separation, Americans United President Rachel Laser added.
“The commission’s public meetings — most of which have been held at the Museum of the Bible and have been dominated by a very specific brand of Christian faith, Christian prayers and predominantly Christian speakers — are a vivid example of this favoritism.”
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