In The Interfaith Alliance v. Trump, (SD NY, July 27, 2026), a New York federal district court dismissed a suit brought by several religious organizations challenging the composition of President Trump's Religious Liberty Commission. Plaintiffs contended that the makeup of the Commission violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act which, among other things, requires membership on federal advisory committees to be “fairly balanced” in light of the functions the committee performs. Plaintiffs (which include organizations representing the Muslim, Hindu and Sikh communities) contended that the Commission contains no members who represent non-Judeo-Christian religious traditions and that the Commission is unbalanced in its representation of views on separation of church and state. The court said in part:
FACA requires that a “[c]ommittee’s members represent a fair balance of viewpoints given the functions to be performed,” but it does not define what constitutes a “fair balance.” ... As such, the statute leaves unanswered three sets of questions regarding whether a committee is appropriately balanced. First, “even before the points of view on an advisory committee can be balanced at all,” one must ask: “which points of view should be balanced[?]”... The next question is: “what constitutes an appropriate or ‘fair’ balance of those views[?]”... Is a single member representing each view enough, or does a committee need more? And finally, “which kind of organization or individual legitimately represents” a viewpoint by being a member of a committee?... For example, what kind of individual would hypothetically speak for an “interfaith perspective”?
Lacking clear answers to these questions, courts have been “highly deferential” in reviewing a committee’s composition....
FACA is properly read as requiring such strong deference for two reasons. First, determining whether a committee is fairly balanced is largely “a political task not properly undertaken by life-tenured, unelected federal judges,”...
Second, it is notable that “as part of [a] compromise [in FACA’s enactment], Congress deleted from the Act any specific standards” governing committee membership....
Under this deferential standard, the RLC’s membership is fairly balanced. Its members include workers in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, have widely varying life experiences—from a former host of a popular television show to a State Lieutenant Governor, are religious leaders as well as rank-and-file congregants, and—to the extent that it matters—encompass adherents of at least five different religions....
It was certainly within President Trump’s discretion to decide that it was comparatively more important to prioritize balancing whether the RLC’s members were “representatives of various sectors of society, including the private sector, employers, educational institutions, religious communities, and States.”...
The Court also rejects the premise that there is a single “Judeo-Christian” viewpoint....
AP reports on the decision.
