Does the FACE Act Protect Churches?

After anti-Immigration and Customs Enforcement agitators invaded a church in the middle of a service, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison suggested that they were protected by the First Amendment and did not violate the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, commonly known as the FACE Act.

“People have a right to lift up their voices and make their peace, and none of us are immune from the voice of the public,” Ellison told former CNN host Don Lemon when asked about the church invasion in an interview Monday. Lemon was present during the disruption and filmed the agitators in action.

Ellison, the top law enforcement official in the state, went on to claim that it would be a “stretch” to prosecute the anti-ICE agitators under the FACE Act or the Ku Klux Klan Act.

“Chanting cannot be a crime; it’s freedom of expression,” Ellison stated.

“So, the KKK Act is when people will use the threat of force or violence to deny you your human rights, your civil rights, under the color of law,” the attorney general said. “It’s a wild stretch and inappropriate” to use it in this case, he added.

“The FACE Act, by the way, is designed to protect the rights of people seeking their reproductive rights to be protected, and so that people for a religious reason cannot just use religion to break into women’s reproductive health centers,” Ellison added. “So how they are stretching either of these laws to apply to people who protested in a church over the behavior or the perceived behavior of a religious leader is beyond me.”

On the contrary, the agitators may have violated both the KKK Act and the FACE Act, and it is far from a stretch to say so.

The Church Invasion

Ellison’s comments came after agitators walked directly into the middle of the sanctuary in Cities Church, a non-denominational Christian church in St. Paul, and shouted “Justice for Renee Good!” as they surrounded various members of the congregation mid-service.

An ICE agent fatally shot Good on Jan. 7 while she was driving her car, right after her car appeared to make contact with him. She had been using the car for hours to obstruct traffic and frustrate ICE’s law enforcement efforts.

The agitators on Sunday targeted the church because one of the pastors, David Easterwood, also works with ICE.

An agitator who goes by the name “DaWokeFarmer” posted videos of the action.

DOJ Investigating Church Invasion

The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division is investigating the incident for potential violations of the FACE Act, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon announced Sunday.

She also mentioned potential prosecutions under the Ku Klux Klan Act.

The FACE Act Protects Churches

Contrary to Ellison’s claim, the FACE Act, which President Bill Clinton signed into law in 1994 after Republicans joined Democrats to pass it in Congress, explicitly protects houses of worship.

While the law aimed to secure women’s rights to enter an abortion clinic without molestation, it also explicitly protects religious freedom.

The statute imposes criminal penalties on anyone who “by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship.”

The Ku Klux Klan Act

Dhillon also explained how the Justice Department could bring charges against the agitators under the Ku Klux Klan Act.

President Ulysses S. Grant signed the Ku Klux Klan Act in 1871, aiming to combat the racial terror tactics of America’s most notorious hate group. Dhillon mentioned charging the church invaders under 18 U.S. Code Section 241, which bars “conspiracy against rights.”

This provision imposes fines and/or prison time if “two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same.”

Depriving someone of the right to free exercise of religion falls under the plain text of the statute.

It seems Keith Ellison either doesn’t know the plain text of the FACE Act or he is deliberately misleading the public about its applicability to defending churches.

Ellison claims that the Justice Department is muddying the law—but the argument for prosecuting the church invaders is crystal clear.

If anyone should know that, it’s Minnesota’s top law enforcement official.

Instead of admitting the truth, he’s carrying water for people who invaded a church just to demonize federal law enforcement. Just how “soft on crime” can you get?

This article originally appeared at The Daily Signal.