Case Overview

Muslim Advocates has filed litigation to hold the federal government for misleading and biased information it has released about terrorism in order to support President Trump’s unjust Muslim Ban.

Muslim Advocates and Democracy Forward Foundation sued the U.S. Department of Justices and Homeland Security for issuing a misleading, biased, and harmful government report on terrorism. The complaint brings a challenge under the Administrative Procedure Act for violation of the Information Quality Act (IQA)—a little-known data accuracy law—that requires federal agencies to provide accurate, reliable, and unbiased information to the public. Under the IQA, information must meet an even stricter quality standard if it is expected to have a “clear and substantial impact on important public policies” like the current debate on immigration policy and the Muslim Ban.

In the government report, the administration’s analysis mangles the facts in order to fabricate a threat posed by immigrants, particularly those of Muslim background, in order to promote the administration’s extreme anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant policies. For example, the report asserts that 73 percent of individuals convicted of international terrorism-related offenses were foreign-born. But that statistic depends on not including any acts of domestic terrorism in the analysis, even though independent studies, as well as the government’s own studies, have shown that most violent extremist acts in the United States over the past decade have been related to extremist white nationalist ideology and committed by U.S. citizens.

The administration has been relying on the report to support its efforts to end longstanding pathways to legal immigration, such as the diversity visa lottery and family reunification program, and to justify the Muslim Ban.

CASE DETAILS

Date filed: April 9, 2018

Court(s):  United States District Court for the Northern District of California