ACLU to Present Oral Arguments in Case of Prominent Muslim Scholar Barred From US

The
American Civil Liberties Union will present arguments before a federal
appeals court Tuesday in the case of a Swiss professor and leading
scholar of the Muslim world who was denied entry to the United States
based on his political views. Professor Tariq Ramadan was invited to
teach at the University of Notre Dame in 2004 but the U.S. government
revoked his visa, citing a statute that applies to those who have
"endorsed or espoused" terrorism. After the ACLU and other
organizations filed suit, the government abandoned its claim that
Ramadan had endorsed terrorism, but it continues to exclude him because
he made small donations to a Swiss charity that the government alleges
has given money to Hamas. The ACLU will argue that the government's
exclusion of Ramadan was motivated not by anything he did but by his
vocal criticism of U.S. foreign policy.

"By denying visas to prominent foreign scholars and writers simply
because they were critical of United States foreign policy, the Bush
administration used immigration laws to skew and stifle political
debate inside the U.S.," said Jameel Jaffer, Director of the ACLU
National Security Project, who will argue the case for the plaintiffs.
"While the government has an interest in excluding people who present a
threat to the country, it doesn't have any legitimate interest in
excluding foreign nationals simply because of their political views.
The Bush administration was wrong to revive this Cold War practice, and
the Obama administration should not defend it."

The appeal stems from a January 2006
lawsuit challenging Professor Ramadan's exclusion filed by the ACLU and
the New York Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the American Academy of
Religion, the American Association of University Professors and the PEN
American Center. A federal judge wrongly upheld the exclusion in
December 2007.

WHAT:
Oral arguments in American Academy of Religion v. Napolitano, a challenge to the exclusion of Professor Tariq Ramadan from the U.S. on the basis of his political views.

WHO:
Jaffer will argue the case before
Judges Wilfred Feinberg, Jon O. Newman and Reena Raggi of the U.S.
Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Attorneys on the case are
Jaffer, Melissa Goodman, Lucas Guttentag and Judy Rabinovitz of the
ACLU, Arthur Eisenberg of the NYCLU, and New York immigration lawyer
Claudia Slovinsky. The lawsuit was originally brought against
then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff and
then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

WHEN:
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
10:00 a.m. EDT

WHERE:
Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse
Ceremonial Courtroom, 9th Fl.
500 Pearl Street
New York, NY 10007

More information about the Ramadan
case, the history of ideological exclusion, and the ACLU's separate
lawsuit concerning the exclusion of South African scholar Adam Habib is
available online at: www.aclu.org/exclusion