Journalist Georgia Fort, right, and Minnesota state Senate candidate Jamael Lundy leave the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis on Jan. 30, 2026. \u00a0Photo: Renee Jones Schneider\/The Minnesota Star Tribune via Getty Images <\/p>\n
The FACE Act was written with a very specific purpose: to protect those seeking abortions without restricting First Amendment-protected speech. Passed in 1994 under President Bill Clinton, the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act arose after a horrific string of attacks on reproductive care facilities and providers across the United States.<\/p>\n
Decades later, the Trump administration is twisting this law to chill dissent by prosecuting journalists for the crime of reporting.<\/p>\n
Two journalists, former CNN host Don Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort, were arrested Friday after covering a recent protest at a Minneapolis-area church. According to the Department of Justice, Lemon\u2019s crime was a start-to-finish livestream reporting on the protest, beginning with an organizing meeting and concluding with the protest itself at Cities Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. As for Fort, the only allegation proffered by federal prosecutors is that she and Lemon approached the pastor \u2014 who has a day job running the local Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office \u2014 in \u201cclose proximity\u201d and tried to oppress and intimidate him by \u201cpeppering him with questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Covering a protest \u2014 even one inside a church \u2014 isn\u2019t a crime.<\/p>\n
Such actions, prosecutors allege, are violations of the FACE Act, which includes a provision focused on houses of worship.<\/p>\n
U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi brought these charges despite the fact that the FACE Act protects \u201cexpressive conduct (including peaceful picketing or other peaceful demonstration) from the jeopardy of prosecution.\u201d That language clearly did not confuse a federal magistrate and an appellate court when they refused to issue a warrant. So the Justice Department convinced a grand jury to indict them.<\/p>\n
Courts have found the right to report and record events of public concern almost universally to be \u201cexpressive conduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
The FACE Act itself provides specific instructions on the kind of behavior that constitutes a violation. It notes that one cannot interfere, intimidate, or obstruct ingress or egress to a reproductive health services clinic or to or from a place of worship, \u201crendering passage to or from such a place of worship unreasonably difficult or hazardous.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s this language about a place of worship that the Trump administration is leaning on. But it\u2019s clear that this language ensures that the law applies only to actions involving restriction on physical freedom of movement, interference in access to property, or actions causing\u00a0a person to experience reasonable fear of harm.<\/p>\n
In this case, the term \u201cinterfere with\u201d means to restrict a person\u2019s freedom of movement. \u201cIntimidate\u201d means to place a person in reasonable apprehension of bodily harm to themselves or to others. And \u201cphysical obstruction\u201d means making it unreasonably difficult or dangerous to enter or leave a facility that provides reproductive health services or a place of worship.<\/p>\n
Looking at video of the protest, it\u2019s clear that these journalists weren\u2019t interfering, obstructing, or intimidating in ways that would violate the FACE Act. Covering a protest \u2014 even one inside a church \u2014 isn\u2019t a crime. And asking questions \u2014 including difficult ones \u2014 isn\u2019t a violation of religious freedom.<\/p>\n
These are things all journalists do, which is precisely what makes this prosecution so chilling.<\/p>\n
Courts have warned about the danger of the FACE Act being abused by overzealous prosecutors for years.<\/p>\n
Related
\n Reproductive Rights Activists Charged Under Law Intended to Protect Abortion Clinics<\/p>\n
In the case New York v. Operation Rescue, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals noted in 2001 that courts must prevent abuse of the FACE Act because an erroneous application \u201cthreatens to impinge legitimate First Amendment activity.\u201d\u00a0The courts have made a distinction between actions that make going to a place of worship \u201cunpleasant or even emotionally difficult, including yelling,\u201d and conduct that is prohibited by the FACE Act. Since the act does not criminalize protesting or even unpleasant yelling, it certainly does not criminalize two reporters doing their job by covering a community crisis \u2014 even if that community crisis is at a house of worship.<\/p>\n
This, of course, isn\u2019t the first attempt by the Trump administration to stifle the press. Just this month, for instance, federal agents raided the home of a Washington Post reporter and seized her devices in a leak investigation.<\/p>\n
As the Trump administration\u2019s attacks on press freedom continue to mount, it\u2019s critical that journalists who find themselves under fire find support. As the director of the Press Freedom Defense Fund, I\u2019m working to make sure that Fort has the resources she\u2019ll need to mount a strong defense.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s critical is that the media cover this attack, look at the administration\u2019s motivations, and pay attention to who is being prosecuted.<\/p>\n
Weaponizing the FACE Act against journalists is a dangerous escalation from the White House. What\u2019s critical is that the media cover this attack, look at the administration\u2019s motivations, and pay attention to who is being prosecuted \u2014 whether it\u2019s a Washington Post reporter with a deep Rolodex of government sources, or two Black journalists covering anti-ICE activism in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
The news industry must also continue to chronicle the litany of abuses carried out by the Trump administration\u2019s immigration enforcement apparatus on the streets of Minneapolis and other cities across the U.S. This is not simply a shambolic legal gambit, but also an obvious attempt to divert attention away from the horrifying assault that has resulted in true violations of First Amendment rights of protesters and journalists, and the brutal killings of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.<\/p>\n
The post The Farcical Case Against Don Lemon and Georgia Fort for Protest Reporting appeared first on The Intercept.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Journalist Georgia Fort, right, and Minnesota state Senate candidate Jamael Lundy leave the Federal Courthouse in Minneapolis on Jan. 30, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4655","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-investigate-unsolved-mysteries"],"yoast_head":"\n