Legal scholars torpedo MAGA rationale for abusing landmark law

Former CNN host Don Lemon is among the 39 people facing federal charges in connection with a January 18 protest inside an evangelical Christian fundamentalist church in Minneapolis, where demonstrators interrupted a service to speak out against aggressive U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. Federal prosecutors are arguing that interrupting the service was an attack on churchgoers' First Amendment rights.

Lemon, however, is emphasizing that he wasn't part of the protest — he was strictly there as a journalist covering it.

Reporter Claire Wang examines the legal issues the case raises in an article published by The Guardian on March 4. And according to some legal scholars, prosecutors in the Donald Trump-era U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) are perverting a 1994 law — the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act or FACE Act — in order to attack political opponents.

Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, told The Guardian, "What we're seeing with Trump is the favoring of some places and viewpoints over others, and an increase in prosecutions to blur the line between speech and intimidation and protests…. The FACE Act is the nuclear option. The penalties are extreme. It's one thing to say people shouldn't disrupt religious services and another to charge them with a felony."

The 39 defendants, according to Ziegler, are being accused of violating First Amendment rights when it is the Trump DOJ that is attacking the First Amendment.

Wang notes that the FACE Act, signed into law by President Bill Clinton 32 years ago, "was initially established to protect abortion clinics from an eruption of violence" and that "a clause extending the protections to houses of worship was added later."

"For most of its history," Wang notes, "the FACE Act has been used exclusively to prosecute anti-abortion groups and agitators. The Trump Administration, Ziegler said, has rolled back the use of the law to prohibit blockades of abortion clinics while expanding its powers against pro-Palestine and anti-ICE protests near religious sites…. In September, the Justice Department used the law to sue the pro-Palestinian activists involved in the 2024 New Jersey synagogue protest. It marked the first time the Face Act was used to target a demonstration at a place of worship."

Sophie Ellman-Golan, director of strategic communications for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, believes that a "political event" taking place inside a place of worship is fair game for nonviolent protests.

Ellman-Golan told The Guardian, "We really believe that First Amendment protest rights are an essential part of building an open society and democracy that have allowed Jews to thrive in New York City…. Something should not be given the shield of religion just because they're taking place inside a church."