DEARBORN — Dearborn attorney Majed Moughni, who earlier this month tried to intervene into the McDonald’s non-halal settlement and was denied by Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen MacDonald, now has the backing of two civil rights groups in hopes to have the judge rescind an order which prohibited him from speaking publicly on the case and pursuing further action.

In a brief filed last week, attorneys with the Michigan branch of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) said Judge MacDonald went too far when she ruled on Feb. 7 that Moughni must remove all comments about the settlement McDonald’s recently reached over complaints that it sold non-halal chicken advertised as halal at the Dearborn location on Ford Rd. Moughni had tried gathering support from local Muslim residents on the Dearborn Community Members Facebook page.

In addition to the ACLU brief, the Public Citizen Litigation Group, a consumer advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., that is part of a larger group founded by Ralph Nader, filed a brief on Friday against Judge MacdDonald’s order as well.

McDonald’s Corp, Franchisee Finley’s Management Company and plaintiff Ahmed Ahmed, who alleged that he had purchased a non-halal sandwich from the Ford Rd. location in 2011, had reached a settlement agreement of over $700,000 that would be dispensed between Ahmed, Dearborn law firm Jaafar & Mahdi Law Group, P.C., who represented the class plaintiffs in the case, The Arab American National Museum in Dearborn and the HUDA clinic in Detroit. 

Moughni had originally filed a complaint asking that the settlement be set aside, or that people who might have been injured be given more time to challenge it. However Judge MacDonald and the plaintiff attorneys on the case believed that Moughni was spreading deceiving information to the public. The next hearing for the case will take place on March 1.