Embattled court nominee Mangi has long record of arguing for religious freedom
Democrats claim Biden’s pick for appellate court is facing anti-Muslim bias
At first glance, Adeel Mangi would seem to be the type of lawyer who should get strong Republican support after being nominated for the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals: Mangi not only has a stellar background in corporate law — he once secured a $2 billion verdict in a case involving the theft of trade secrets — he also has done extensive work, much of it pro bono, calling for protection of religious freedom and supporting broad implementation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which has been consistently praised by conservatives.
But there’s a problem: Mangi is Muslim; if President Biden’s nomination of him in November is ever ratified, the Pakistani-American attorney would become the first Muslim U.S. appellate judge.
So far, not a single Republican senator has indicated support for the nomination, and the opposition of two Democrats (Catherine Cortez Masto and Jacky Rosen, both of Nevada) has made it extremely unlikely that the Biden administration will be able to muster the majority vote Mangi needs to take office. (A third Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has also said he won’t vote for Mangi unless the nominee gets some Republican support.) Unless senators ratify the nomination before the next term begins at the start of 2025, the nomination expires.
Democrats are claiming that anti-Muslim prejudice is to blame. They allege that Republicans are unwilling to look at Mangi’s professional record, instead focusing on bogus, unsupported claims of antisemitism.
And while GOP opposition is probably rooted in deep partisanship as much as anything else, Democrats have a point: Some Republicans have sought to link Mangi to Islamic terrorism and even the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel. This is despite that fact that at a December hearing Mangi called the attack a “horror involving the deaths of innocent civilians” and that he had “no patience — none — for any attempts to justify or defend those events.”
The opposition of the two Nevada senators apparently is related to concerns by some law enforcement leaders in the state about Mangi’s affiliation with the Alliance for Families for Justice, of which he is a member of an advisory board. The nonprofit organization advocates on behalf of prisoners and their families.
A record of promoting religious liberty
Mangi’s most noteworthy case involving religious freedom that he has handled as a lawyer was one settled in 2017 in which the Bernards Township of New Jersey ended up paying $3.25 million to the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge for the ways the city sought to block the construction of a mosque. The Muslims had claimed that the township had discriminated on the basis of religion and caving to community anti-Muslim sentiment.
Mangi also represented Muslims who won $400,000 in a similar case in another New Jersey city, Bayonne.
Mangi has also written or co-written friend-of-the-court briefs in various cases advocating for religious liberty. Among them, according to the bio on his law firm’s website:
In a case involving alleged federal abuse of no-fly lists against Muslims, Mangi argued at the appellate level for an expansive reading of RFRA to limit the immunity of government officials who violated the law.
In several cases involving alleged state violations of the Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, Mangi submitted papers on behalf of a wide variety of religious organizations including those representing Muslims, Christians, Unitarians and Jews.
In a dispute related to the no-fly lists, Mangi took his arguments in a friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court on behalf of 67 religious organizations. He said that RFRA would be ineffective without the ability of those harmed by religious discrimination to collect monetary damages.
He also was the counsel of record for the National Association of Muslim Lawyers in Trump v. Hawaii. The group was among those opposing President Donald Trump’s 2017 travel ban disproportionately affecting Muslims.
Mangi also wrote friend-of-the-court briefs on behalf of interfaith groups that took stands on cases involving LGTBQ employment, building of the Mexican border wall, and the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.
Mangi is a partner at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler in New York City. He earned his law degree at Harvard University.
Among the legal specialties Mangi’s law firm mentions for him on it website are complex commercial actions; intellectual property litigation; class action litigation; trade secrets, trademark and copyright litigation; and cross-border capital markets.