[JURIST] The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) [advocacy website] filed a class action lawsuit [complaint, PDF] Thursday accusing the Trump administration of violating the religious freedom of nationals from the seven nations named in President Donald Trump’s immigration executive order [text]. The suit [ACLU backgrounder], filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California [official website], alleges the executive order violates due process and the rights to freedom of speech and religious freedom of all those effected by the order. The complaint states:

The federal government has made it clear that it intends to favor Christian immigrants over Muslims in making decisions about who to refuse entry, detain, interrogate, and/or deport. As such, the Executive Order violates the First Amendment, the equal-protection and due process rights granted under the Fifth Amendment, the Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Administrative Procedure Act.

The ACLU is seeking to have the court order the administration not to enforce the travel ban.

Many different groups and individuals have filed lawsuits in the wake of newly-elected president Trump’s swift and numerous executive actions. Earlier this week the City of San Francisco filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against the Trump administration over the executive order to withhold federal funding from designated sanctuary cities. In January the Council on American-Islamic Relations [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia challenging the constitutionality of the Trump administration’s executive order restricting immigration from several Muslim-majority nations. Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson also sued [JURIST report] President Donald Trump over the temporary immigration ban, and several other states have since followed suit. A journalist and a graduate student at MIT filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] last month against eight federal agencies for records on attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions [official profile]. Also in January the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) [advocacy website] filed a lawsuit [JURIST report] in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York claiming President Donald Trump’s continued business dealings violate the Emoluments Clause of the US Constitution.