A federal lawsuit filed last month accuses the city of Dearborn, Michigan, of playing favorites with religion -- celebrating Islam with taxpayer-funded public displays while giving Christianity and Judaism the cold shoulder, according to reporting by Charisma News.

The suit was filed September 17 in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan by the American Freedom Law Center on behalf of Margot Cleveland, a journalist and senior legal correspondent for The Federalist. Named in the suit are the city of Dearborn and its mayor, Abdullah Hammoud. The complaint alleges violations of Cleveland's First and Fourteenth Amendment rights.

The case began, Cleveland says, with banners. She told Fox News Digital she was picking up pizza in downtown Dearborn when she noticed "Ramadan Kareem" banners lining the boulevard. But with Easter and Passover approaching, she said she saw no comparable public displays honoring the Christian and Jewish holy days.

Cleveland says she began pressing city officials about the discrepancy and filed public-records requests. According to Charisma News, her investigation turned up additional Islamic-themed decorations and Ramadan merchandise bearing the seal of the Dearborn Police Department. Earlier Fox News reporting found that city records show roughly $6,500 was spent on Ramadan banners and a crescent moon display.

Cleveland proposed a simple remedy: put up Easter and Passover banners, crosses, and Stars of David so that Christians and Jews receive the same public recognition. Instead, she alleges, city leaders ignored her concerns while the Ramadan displays kept expanding.

"I have not asked the city not to celebrate Ramadan," she told Fox News Digital. "What I've asked is that the city treat Christians and Jews equally."

"My beef is with the mayor and the people running the city who are discriminating against Christians and Jews," Cleveland added.

It must be said plainly: these are allegations in a lawsuit, not findings of a court. The city has not been found guilty of anything, and no judge has yet ruled on whether Dearborn's displays violate the Constitution. The Charisma News report did not include a response from Dearborn officials at the time of publication.

Still, the question at the heart of the case is one every city in America will have to face: when government gets into the business of decorating for religious holidays, the Constitution demands it not pick winners and losers among faiths. What happens next in Dearborn could carry implications far beyond a few banners hanging on a boulevard.