Does The First Amendment Give You the Right To Disrupt A Church Service?

The First Amendment protects both freedom of speech and freedom of assembly, but those rights do not give activists carte blanche to invade a church and take over the service.

Now, however, a group of activists who did just that has filed a motion to dismiss federal civil rights charges, arguing that its conduct amounted to “pure speech and assembly” protected by the First Amendment. According to the motion, “The Constitution does not contain any exception to free speech in churches.”

Such a statement might make sense if the agitators faced charges related to free speech, but they don’t. They face charges for violating churchgoers’ right to religious freedom—which also appears in the First Amendment.

A federal grand jury indicted 38 people on two charges: violating the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, which also protects access to churches; and violating the Ku Klux Klan Act, which criminalizes efforts to deprive Americans of their fundamental rights—in this case, the right to the free exercise of religion.

According to the indictment, agitators who claimed to be opposing Immigration and Customs Enforcement because one of the church’s pastors worked for ICE refused to leave when asked and shouted, “Who shut this down? We shut this down!”

The indictment also mentions that agitators screamed at crying children, blocked parents from getting to their children in Sunday School, and that one agitator told a child his parents were Nazis and going to hell. Churchgoers also reported fearing that they were witnessing an active-shooter event, a fear that is unfortunately not irrational in America today.

In a motion to dismiss the charges, filed Monday, ringleader Nekima Levy Armstrong and 30 other defendants claim that all the activity in the indictment is covered by the First Amendment.

“There was no alleged conduct that crossed the line into violence, threats or anything that went beyond free speech,” the filing states. “The protest was limited to pure speech and assembly.”

The defendants argue that the government is attempting to punish them for exercising their “right to free speech and freedom of assembly” because their “political action happened to take place in a church.”

The filing also claims that “there are no allegations supporting a conclusion that defendants’ actions were intended to interfere with freedom of worship.”

The motion claims the government is punishing the defendants because of their message and because they chose to deliver it in a church.

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