Religious groups may continue their challenge to the Trump administration’s January 2025 decision to eliminate longstanding restrictions on immigration-related arrests and surveillance at houses of worship, a divided federal appeals court ruled Oct. 20.
The new 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held that the groups have standing to sue. In a lawsuit, the parties have to show standing by demonstrating that they have a close connection to the legal controversy at hand.
Circuit Judge Florence Pan, joined by Circuit Judge Robert Wilkins, wrote that members of the plaintiff organizations face “imminent harm from increased enforcement at their houses of worship,” and that the injunction they seek “will likely redress their injury, at least in part.”
Circuit Judge Neomi Rao dissented. She wrote that the plaintiffs failed to clearly show standing, particularly on the question of whether a court order restoring the previous limits would actually change enforcement practices.
Those earlier limits, she wrote, “simply discouraged immigration enforcement in protected areas but imposed no actual restriction on enforcement authority or discretion.”
Restoring them would not reliably bind the current administration, she wrote.
“Enforcement priorities and policies are the exclusive purview of the Executive Branch, and supervising these choices is beyond the judicial province,” Rao wrote.
The ruling addresses only standing and sends the case back to the district court to consider the remaining preliminary injunction factors. It does not decide whether the policy violates the First Amendment, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or the Administrative Procedure Act.
The ruling highlights the clash between the federal government’s immigration enforcement policies and claims by religious organizations that operations taking place on or near houses of worship interfere with congregants’ constitutionally protected religious exercise rights. It comes after a parallel case in the Fourth Circuit resulted in a limited injunction protecting certain congregations.
The case centers on the rollback memo, issued by acting Secretary of Homeland Security Benjamine Huffman on Jan. 20, 2025, which repealed then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’s October 2021 memo titled “Guidelines for Enforcement Actions in or Near Protected Areas.” The 2021 memo was the most recent version of the department’s longstanding sensitive locations policy that directed federal agents “to the fullest extent possible,” not to carry out enforcement operations in or near houses of worship without prior high-level approval, except in narrow, urgent circumstances. The Huffman memo replaced that approach with an instruction that officers use discretion and common sense.
In April 2025, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich issued an order declining to prevent the Department of Homeland Security agents from conducting immigration enforcement operations at churches. She held that the groups had not shown a credible threat of enforcement at their specific locations, that the 2025 memo did not single out houses of worship, and that the evidence showed only isolated incidents.
Friedrich also ruled that the groups lacked standing because they failed to show their potential injuries were imminent or traceable to the government’s changed policy.
The groups, led by Mennonite Church USA, argued that removing the prior limits creates a credible threat of enforcement and has already chilled religious exercise. Congregation leaders had said immigrant church members stayed away from events out of fear of arrest or surveillance, and that this interfered with their ability to worship communally and welcome and serve immigrants.
Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.
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