When dozens of protesters interrupted a church service in St Paul, Minnesota, earlier this year, it revived a fierce yet enduring debate about whether places of worship are appropriate arenas for dissent.
In demanding the resignation of a pastor who leads a local Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) field office, demonstrators chanted “ICE out” and “Hands up, don’t shoot!” at Cities church on 18 January. Religious and political leaders condemned the action, fueled by the church’s statement that protesters had “frightened children and created a scene marked by intimidation and threat”.
Since then, the justice department has indicted 39 people, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon, on charges of conspiracy and interfering with the first amendment rights of worshipers. (Lemon had been covering the incident as a reporter.) Their arrests sparked outrage among free speech advocates, as many questioned whether the Trump administration had overstepped its authority in using a 1994 law to prosecute protesters and journalists in houses of worship.
“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,” said Mary Ziegler, a professor at the University of California’s Davis School of Law.
Using the ‘nuclear option’ to charge church protesters
Acts of civil disobedience in religious spaces, sometimes spearheaded by faith leaders, are not a new phenomenon in US history. In 1984, the Rev D Douglas Roth delivered searing sermons against “corporate evil” and led disillusioned steelworkers to picket Pittsburgh area churches attended by industry executives. The Lutheran minister was defrocked and jailed for 112 days. In 2024, pro-Palestinian activists hoisting “Stop the sale of stolen Palestinian land” banners protested an event at a New Jersey synagogue that promoted property sales in Israel and the occupied West Bank. The demonstrators clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters outside the synagogue, leading to the arrest of two members from the latter camp.
What is new in the civil disobedience landscape is the Trump administration’s deployment of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (Face) Act to charge protesters for promoting certain political causes in houses of worship. Ziegler calls this a “reinvention” of the statute.
The 1994 law was initially established to protect abortion clinics from an eruption of violence; a clause extending the protections to houses of worship was added later. For most of its history, 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. Last January, Trump pardoned 10 anti-abortion advocates who had been charged with violating the Face Act.
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. In late January, the DoJ asked a federal judge to indefinitely pause the civil lawsuit so that a related criminal investigation can be resolved first. Attorneys for the protesters, meanwhile, pushed for the case to proceed or be dismissed entirely.
Ziegler acknowledged that freedom of religion should be protected, as should people’s right to pray without disruption. But the tool for enforcing that right, she said, is the trespassing law. “The Face Act is the nuclear option,” she said. “The penalties are extreme. It’s one thing to say people shouldn’t disrupt religious services and another to charge them with a felony.”
In response to the Minnesota demonstration in January, lawmakers in a half dozen states quickly introduced legislation expanding penalties for disrupting religious services. A bill in Oklahoma would direct protesters who step within 100 feet of a place of worship to maintain at least eight feet of distance from worshippers. New York City lawmakers are debating two bills that would establish protest-free buffer zones around religious sites. The proposals were a response to recent demonstrations outside two New York synagogues, both of which were holding events to promote illegal settlements in the West Bank and property sales in Israel.
A number of moderate Jewish groups in New York have endorsed the bills, while several progressive Jewish organizations released a joint statement last month opposing them.
“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,” said Sophie Ellman-Golan, the director of strategic communications for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, one of the groups opposing the buffer zone proposal.
Ellman-Golan said houses of worship often function as meeting and events spaces where political issues are discussed. During the mayoral campaign last October, for example, Congregation Beth Elohim (CBE) hosted a candidate forum with Zohran Mandami that drew dozens of pro-Israel protesters.
“That was their right because it’s a political event taking place inside a synagogue,” Ellman-Golan said. “Something should not be given the shield of religion just because they’re taking place inside a church.”
The lasting impact of church protests
One of the biggest church demonstrations in modern US history interrupted Sunday mass at St Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City. In 1989, dozens of protesters lay down in the cathedral’s middle aisle and performed a silent “die-in”, while 7,000 others joined a mass protest outside.
“Stop the Church,” organized by Aids Coalition to Unleash Power (Act Up) and Women’s Health and Action Mobilization (Wham!), targeted the Catholic Church for its efforts to block condom distribution and safe-sex education in public schools, said Sarah Schulman, an Act Up member and curator of the Act Up Oral History Project.
Despite the meticulous planning, it was the moments that veered off-script that generated international headlines, such as when one Act Up member screamed at the cardinal: “You’re killing us!” Or when another crumbled a communion wafer in his hands.
The police arrested 111 protesters, and the action was sharply rebuked by religious leaders and politicians. But the impact was incalculable, Schulman said.
“Stop the Church” put Aids activism on the map and transformed how people with the disease were portrayed in the media. Before the action, Schulman said, newspapers were printing photos of “emancipated people dying in their beds.” Afterward, they sought images of activists fighting for their lives. The ensuing media coverage also paved the way for Act Up to push for important policy changes, Schulman said, including the legalization of needle exchange programs and the inclusion of women and people of color in FDA trials for HIV treatment.
“For homosexuals with Aids to go into a catholic church was so far beyond what anyone had seen before,” Schulman said. “It showed the world how high the stakes were.”
For Schulman, the discourse around the recent protests in Minnesota and New York have largely missed the point. The issue is less about the protection of religious freedom, she said, than a people’s right to react when the church attempts to shape matters of public interest.
“Once a religious organization outsteps its boundaries and gets involved in secular politics to an extent that’s detrimental to a large number of people, the public has a right to respond,” Schulman said.
