Donald Trump’s Policies and the First Amendment of the United States Constitution

First Amendment Essay
Student's Name
College/University
Course
Professor's Name
Due Date
The first amendment of the United States Constitution protects the liberty and rights of freedom of speech. Substantially, the religion clause has two fundamental provisions: the free exercise and the establishment provisions. The Establishment Provision suppresses the United States government from creating laws that respect a specific religious establishment, while the free exercise provision harbor laws that restrict freedom of exercise. The first amendment also provides fundamental rights like peaceful assembly, freedom of speech, a petition to the government, and press (Congress.gov., n.d.). The utterances by Donald Trump to consider shutting down all the mosques presents numerous questions concerning the above religious provisions. This paper comprehensively analyses how the proposed policy by Donald Trump to close down all the mosques in the country violates the first amendment provisions. Also, the paper will present a compelling case for the Muslim congregation against the policy while using the Constitution, legal principles, and appropriate case law.
Would Trump's Policies Violate the First Amendment?
The proposed policy by President Donald Trump to shut down all the mosques in the United States essentially violates the sovereign rights of the American people for free religious exercise as the first amendment provides. The policy formulation targets religious groups, in this case, the Muslim faithful and their institutions, and thus it shows biases against certain faith sects. Such tendencies restrain the Muslim community's ability to exercise their freedom of religion and worship freely. On numerous occasions, the Supreme Court's stance has been that the government should not formulate policies that interfere with religious practices (Ravitch, 2019, p. 64). However, policy interference is only allowable in cases where the state has a compelling interest, and thus such interferences should only aim to attain such interest. Substantially, the proposed policies by Donald Trump do not meet that constitutional threshold as there is no clear state interest.
Lemon v. Kurtzman (1971) is a significant Supreme Court case that supports the argument that the policy violates the human rights of religion. The court case developed the lemon test, which stipulates that any law or proposed policy should have a secular value proposition, and its basic impact should not establish or constrain any religion (Lipp, 2023, p. 1223). According to the Lemon test, a law or policy should not cause entanglement between one religious sect and the executive arm of government. Thence, the proposed approach to shut down all the mosques in the country would fail the lemon test, considering that it not only falls short of secular purpose but also directly restricts freedom of exercising religion. Also, the policy fails on the grounds of equal protection. The proposed approach begs the question of religious discrimination since it only seeks to shut down mosques based on religious affiliation. The government cannot get involved in religious issues or allow religion in government affairs (Lipp, 2023, p.1222). The United States court system has a to...