An Obama-appointed judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by a group of residents seeking to stop a massive mosque from being built in their Sterling Heights, Michigan, neighborhood. But the residents, many of them Chaldean Christians who escaped persecution in Iraq, say they are nowhere near ready to give up the fight for their city and their community.

News of the decision by U.S. District Court Judge Gershwin Drain swept through Michigan’s large Chaldean community late Wednesday, Aug. 1. Many felt deflated.

«My phone is blowing up with neighbors calling,» one woman involved in the case told me.