In Jeanpierre v. Trump, (D UT, Oct. 14, 2025), a Utah federal magistrate judge dismissed a suit challenging on RFRA, free exercise and Establishment Clause grounds President Trump's Executive Order 14253, "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History." Plaintiff is the founder of a religious organization called Black Flag whose tenets include prohibitions on prejudice and discrimination. The court said in part:
According to Mr. Jeanpierre, this executive order “effectively establishes a state sponsored religious doctrine of American historical exceptionalism” and, as a result, is “a direct attack on the foundational tenets of [his] sincerely held religious beliefs.” He alleges the order prevents Mr. Jeanpierre “from exercising his religious autonomy to perceive and interpret history according to his religious conscience.” He alleges the order’s “prohibition against depicting American history as ‘inherently racist, sexist, oppressive, or otherwise irredeemably flawed’” impedes his “religious mandate to identify and confront . . . historical realities” and interferes with his “religious practice of acknowledging and addressing systemic racism” by “imposing a sanitized historical narrative that contradicts [his] religious understanding of reality.” The “restrictions on historical presentations,” according to Mr. Jeanpierre, force “compliance with a historical narrative that [he] religiously believes causes harm to marginalized communities” and “spiritual suffocation and respiratory distress to [his] religion by restricting the free breath of historical truth.” Finally, Mr. Jeanpierre alleges the executive order’s imposed historical doctrine compels him “to violate his religious tenants regarding autonomy, truth-telling, and confrontation of systemic inequity,” forcing him “to choose between adherence to his religious principles and compliance with federal law.”
The court concluded that plaintiff failed to state a cause of action under §1983 which applies only to state officials, or under the Bivens doctrine that does not apply to 1st Amendment claims. The court also rejected plaintiff's RFRA claim, saying in part:
... [T]he executive order ... does not demand any conduct from Mr. Jeanpierre or impose any consequence for his religious beliefs. It orders federal agencies to remove race-centered ideology from the Smithsonian Institution and to restore public monuments, according to President Trump’s historical narrative that the country’s achievements, principles, and milestones are being undermined and cast in a negative light. Mr. Jeanpierre does not assert he was made to alter his religious behavior in some way because of this order.
The court also rejected plaintiff's 1st Amendment claims, saying in part that the Executive Order is neutral and generally applicable and does not target religion.
