Posted: August 11th, 2022

The First Amendment to the Constitution

The First Amendment to the Constitution
The First Amendment to the Constitution states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” In 2015, Presidential candidate Donald Trump proposed that he would consider shutting down mosques in the U.S. Assume for the purposes of this assignment that Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 and that he wrote executive orders mandating that these proposals become policy.

-Consider Donald Trump’s statements from a Constitutional perspective. Would Trump’s policies violate the First Amendment? Explain.
-Suppose you are the lawyer involved in this case. Which side would you choose to represent, the U.S. Government as the defendant or the congregation of a Muslim mosque as the plaintiffs?
-After deciding your position, please make arguments on behalf of your client (either the U.S. Government or the Muslim Congregation). Explain your position using your interpretation of the Constitution and relevant case law.

-paper must be at least 1500 words.
-Please double space your paper and use standard 12-point font.
-Make sure to proofread your paper before submitting.
-Please follow APA format when referencing information from outside sources.
-Please include your word count at the end of your assignment.

The First Amendment to the Constitution
During the 2015 campaign, Donald Trump as a candidate notably commented that his administration, when he becomes the President, will have absolutely no choice but to shut down some mosques that would be identified to be engaging in bad things or where terrorists use a place of arranging their deeds against the United States and its citizens. According to Trump, the move of implementing the policy that will see some mosques shut down will be based on the response to terrorist attacks that are considered to be organized inside those mosques (Gass, 2015). Based on the comment of Donald Trump regarding the policies that would see some mosques being shut down, this paper provides an analysis of Trump’s statement in relation to the First Amendment violation. The paper also provides the argument against the implementation of the policies by the U.S. Government under the administration of Donald Trump as the Present by acting as the defendant or the congregation of a Muslim mosque.
When considering Donald Trump’s statement from a constitutional perspective, the policies suggested by Trump violets the First Amendment. The First Amendment provides that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press, or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” The move to shut down mosques will be a clear violation of the right to any law to respect an establishment of religion, which is made applicable to the States by the Fourteenth Amendment. The First Amendment also involves the establishment of a Clause that provides protection to all individuals in the United States from government actions that might seem to be favoring or disfavoring particular religions. The Government is also precluded from undertaking actions that might make individuals of a particular religion feel that they are targeted or outsiders while they are in the country or state. Therefore, despite the policies proposed by Trump of shutting down some mosques having its justifications, it will still interfere with the establishment of the Islamic religion, which violates the First Amendment. The actions will also see Muslims considered as targets or terrorists with their place of worship as targets that will be considered as disfavoring the Islamic religion, which is also unconstitutional.
The First Amendment provides the freedom to choose and the freedom to act in a religious perspective, which also includes the freedom to speech. The statement by Trump regarding shutting down mosques could be considered unconstitutional if the clear and present danger is not established before the shutdown. With all freedom having their limitation, the First Amendment that protects the mosques from being shut down based on Trump’s statement can be overpassed if the administration is able to provide a test of the regulator of religious thought. For the statement to be unconstitutional, the Government would have to prove that the content and manner of religious speech being used in the mosques label specific ideas that are uttered by clerics that are considered dangerous to the security of the United States and its citizens.
However, according to the statement provided by Trump, and the situation surrounding it at the time of making, it is clear that the intention is not to use the right channels such as the Constitution test in consideration of which mosque should be shut down due to the engagement or association with the terrorism activities. The statement by Trump intentionally targets Muslims, with the overwhelming intent to undermine the First Amendment by interfering with the Muslim place of worship based on the perspectives of terrorisms. The First Amendment guarantees the right to petition, which also might be violated by the implementation of Trump’s statement. Shutting down mosques without conducting a thorough investigation and other intelligence measures to determine the link of the mosque or its leadership to the terrorist groups or activities will see the right to petition denied. Therefore, the statement made by Trump during his campaign violates the First Amendment at various levels, including freedom of religion by interfering with a place of worship, the freedom of assembly by shutting down the mosques, and the right to petition by not following the required procedures and processes to establish and test the mosque involvement in dangerous activities or speech to the security of the United States and its citizens.
As a representative of the Muslim Congregation, the evidence that can be brought against Trump’s statement as a violation of the First Amendment can be based on the statement made, whereby Donald Trump called for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States or shutting down mosques until the country figures out the terrorism situation. According to the statement made by Trump, the mosques were then associated with either organizing the terrorism acts or were being utilized by terrorists as the center of recruitment and hosting religiously motivated terrorists. However, the allegation against the mosques brought by the Government does not hold substantial perspective, nor are they supported by substantial evidence, but only shows the violation of the First Amendment offered to individuals worshiping in the mosques to be shut down by suggested policies (Cole, 2016). The Court, in this case, should then considered first the fundamentals and importance of respecting and adhering to the rule of law as stipulated by the Constitution of the United States under the First Amendment. The Court should also consider the factors surrounding the said policies that would see innocent citizens of the United States, who should enjoy their right to worship, being denied the right due to speculations that have not been well investigated and tested.
The adoption of Trump’s policies will contract various decisions previously made regarding the First Amendment related situations. For instance, there are various incidents that have been witnessed in the united state related to religious violence in the past that are organized and doctrinally driven. The incidents, which in most cases were regarded as terrorists’ attacks due to the attacking nature which targeted innocent bystanders, have always been isolated with the association of the mosques. For instance, the Court should consider factors considered in cases such as that of 1994, where four defendants were sentenced to 240 years each for playing a role in a bombing that saw six people lost their lives and multiple injured. The Court, during the trial of the four, it ignored the religious belief that would be used as a way of that motivated their participation in the bombing, but only focused on their actions, which was considered as terrorisms. Therefore, the consideration of the policies that are suggested, which will see mosques being shut down due to the connection between the individual associated with terrorist activities, will be a total violation of the First Amendment. Instead, the individuals associated with terrorism should be directly subjected to the law without consideration of their religious beliefs.
The Court should also prevent the implementation of Trump’s government policies of shutting down mosques since considering the acts of individuals who are conducting violence in the name of religious duty, and in this case, who are Muslims is by no means confined to radical Islamic sects. The notion that religious belief and religious conduct are distinguishable pervades the Supreme Court’s Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence. Therefore, despite the power invested in the Government to control or regulate religious conduct, religious belief enjoys total protection from government intrusion. The said policies, when implemented by Trump’s administration, will see the freedom of conscience and freedom to adhere to religious organization or form of worship as the individual may choose being restricted. The situation is not only about Muslims or the mosques’ roles in the said terrorist actions but enters the religious organization. Today the administration may be considering the shutting down of mosques as the solution, but the same can happen in Christian, rather than Islamic, fundamentalism. Reynolds v. the United States, the Supreme Court provided that the state may not intrude upon the sacred realm of religious consciousness. The Court stood by the fact that the merits of o veracity of a particular religious practice or belief should not be used in defining one’s actions that are unlawful related.
Therefore, according to the First Amendment and various cases related to the issue in context, the Court should ensure that the required processes are adhered to, including the “clear and present danger” test (Grinstein, n.d). Since it cannot be dismissed that there is a possibility of some mosques that might be used by terrorists or as a bass of organizing such activities, the deployment of the right measures should instead be adopted by the Government. The right measures should include all security agencies, with clear investigative procedures and processes being conducted, rather than shutting down the mosque, which is a total violation of the First Amendment.

References
Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 303-04 (1940).
Cole, D. (2016). Why Trump’s Proposed Targeting of Muslims Would Be Unconstitutional. ACLU. Retrieved from https://www.aclu.org/blog/religious-liberty/free-exercise-religion/why-trumps-proposed-targeting-muslims-would-be
Gass, N. (2015). Trump: ‘Absolutely no choice’ but to close mosques. Politico. Retrieve from https://www.politico.com/story/2015/11/trump-close-mosques-216008
Grinstein, J. (n.d). Jihad and the Constitution: The First Amendment Implications of Combating Religiously Motivated Terrorism. Retrieved from https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=7674&context=ylj
Bernstein, R. (1994). Trade Center Bombers Get Prison Terms of 240 Years, N.Y. TIMES.
Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145, 166 (1878).

Check Price Discount

Study Notes, Research Topics & Assignment Examples: Support for ISO on ISMS Framework »Copyright and Intellectual Property / Github