A religious liberty organization is asking President Donald Trump
to sign a proposed executive order that would protect the religious
freedom of a family-owned business and others like it from the punitive
actions of an executive agency.“The Vander Boons are at risk of having their plant shut down and
their employees left jobless because of the [Department of
Agriculture’s] unfair targeting of the Vander Boons for their religious
beliefs,” wrote Michael Farris, the
new president of legal defense organization Alliance Defending Freedom, in a
letter sent to Trump Wednesday. The Vander Boons are facing closure due to the United States Department
of Agriculture threatening to pull inspectors from reviewing their
business. The department had made a decision that “prohibits
[the] family-owned Michigan meatpacking facility from including
religious literature concerning marriage on a break room table,”
according to Alliance Defending Freedom...In 2015, Dr. Ryan Lundquist, the USDA site inspector for
West Michigan Beef Company,
found a religious tract about marriage that Donald Vander Boon placed
on the break room table of the family-owned business, according to a
press release from Alliance Defending Freedom. Lundquist took the article and reported it to Robert Becker, the USDA
frontline supervisor, and Lundquist and Becker held a meeting with
Vander Boon, “at which Becker threatened three times to remove USDA
inspectors if Vander Boon didn’t agree to refrain from placing the
article in the break room,” according to Alliance Defending Freedom. Karnail S. Mudahar, USDA deputy district manager,
said
Vander Boon violated a new “anti-harassment” policy that forbids
written or spoken communications that USDA executives determine to be
“disrespectful” or “insult[ing]” in regards to sexual orientation...
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