A Muslim advocacy organization is requesting a Department of Justice investigation into whether comments made by Lancaster\u2019s mayor were unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
In his State of the City address last week, Mayor R. Rex Parris said Lancaster was \u201cgrowing a Christian community.\u201d <\/p>\n
"And don’t let anybody shy away from that,\u201d he said to an audience of ministers. \u201cI need [Lancaster residents] standing up and saying we’re a Christian community, and we’re proud of that." <\/p>\n
The Greater Los Angeles area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations sent a letter Friday to the department requesting an investigation into whether Parris\u2019 comments violated the Constitution\u2019s Establishment Clause, which bans the government from supporting or endorsing a religion.<\/p>\n
"The divisive statement made by the mayor, when analyzed in context of other recent developments, represents a disturbing pattern by the city of Lancaster," said Hussam Ayloush, executive director of CAIR-LA.
<\/br>
<\/br>Parris said he stands by his comments.
<\/br>
<\/br>A spokesman for the Department of Justice wouldn\u2019t comment on whether it had received the letter or whether other groups have complained about the mayor\u2019s comments.
<\/br>
<\/br>Complaints like the council’s are \u201creviewed to determine what action, if any, is appropriate,\u201d said Alejandro Miyar, a department spokesman.\u00a0
<\/br>
<\/br>— Raja Abdulrahim<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Muslim advocacy organization is requesting a Department of Justice investigation into whether comments made by Lancaster\u2019s mayor were unconstitutional. In his State of the City address last week, Mayor R. Rex Parris said Lancaster was \u201cgrowing a Christian community.\u201d "And don’t let anybody shy away from that,\u201d he said to an audience of ministers. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4133,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-285420","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285420","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4133"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=285420"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/285420\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=285420"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=285420"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=285420"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}