The rhubarb over a Muslim lawyer’s nomination to ride the third federal appeals circuit is a moment to mark the most emphatic phrasing in the entire Constitution. It’s the part of Article VI ordaining that, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”* We’ve often cited that marker, but is a religious test really what’s faced by President Biden’s nominee, Adeel Mangi?

Mr. Mangi is a Pakistani American with a distinguished legal education and controversial pro-bono work. He earned degrees in law from Oxford and Harvard and is a partner with Patterson Belknap. He is a highly-rated litigator and, the Associated Press reports, “has secured significant legal victories.” These include eye-popping jury verdicts and two civil rights cases in New Jersey  representing Muslims denied permission to build mosques.

Senator Durbin, chairman of the Judiciary Committee, goes so far as to say that Mr. Mangi’s record suggests he “would be quickly confirmed,” except for “one fact on his resume: He is a Muslim American.” A New York Times columnist, Lydia Pohlgreen, traces opposition to Mr. Mangi to a “wave of Islamophobia that has swept the country.” The criticism he faces, though, centers on his ties to a far-left academic center and a group representing prison inmates. 

Much of the heat directed at Mr. Mangi stems from his role on an advisory board for the Center for Security, Race, and Rights at Rutgers. During his time on the board, Senator Kennedy observed, the center “sponsored several radical events,” including one called “Whose Narrative? 20 Years Since September 11.” The event, Senator Kennedy contends, featured speakers like Sami Al-Arian, convicted of aiding the terror group Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

Mr. Mangi denied knowing about the event during questioning from the Louisiana senator, who asked the nominee “is this how you celebrate 9/11?” While the director of the Rutgers center has expressed “awe of the Palestinian struggle to resist violent occupation, removal, erasure, and the expansion of Israeli settler colonialism,” Mr. Mangi, when asked by Senator Cotton about Hamas’ October 7 terror attacks, called them “abominable.”

Mr. Mangi has distanced himself from the Rutgers center, but his links to the group suggest, as Senator McConnell notes, a lack of either due diligence or sound judgment. Mr. Mangi also faces scrutiny for an advisory role with the Alliance of Families for Justice, which offers “legal assistance for people in prison,” the AP reports. A police group says that reflects “an anti-victim and anti-police bias” that would “cloud his decision-making as a judge.”

Mr. Mangi’s nomination appears to be on thin ice in the saucer of the Senate now that three Democrats — Joe Manchin of West Virginia, along with Jacky Rosen and Catherine Cortez Masto, both of Nevada — have emerged against the nomination. That means the nominee would require support from GOP senators to accede to the circuit bench. The AP detects “scant signs” of any such backing across the aisle.

Even so, President Biden is pushing for a vote. His chief of staff urges confirmation “without delay.” The hard part of this is sorting out the ideology from the religion. We have scant sympathy for the leftist and radical figures whose passage through our courts Mr. Mangi has made his cause. Convicted killer Kathy Boudin, after all, served on the Alliance of Families for Justice board. That doesn’t present a religious test.

A religious test is, say, what was demanded of the first Muslim elected to Congress, Keith Ellison. It was a demand that he be sworn on a Christian Bible. A religious test was suggested for Justice Amy Coney Barrett, when Senator Feinstein complained that the “dogma lives loudly within you.” We opposed both those tests vociferously. As we would were any such test laid to Mr. Mangi. The Senate’s test, though, is not a religious but a political one.

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* Emphasis added by the Sun.