First Amendment

Jacob Sullum | 2.5.2026 5:15 PM

Don Lemon, the former CNN anchor who was arrested on federal civil rights charges last week, portrays his conduct during the January 18 protest that disrupted services at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, as purely journalistic. The Justice Department, joined by his many critics, says he actively participated in the disruption, making him no less criminally liable than the seven protesters who were charged in the same case. If you break the law, Lemon's detractors note, the fact that you have a camera and a microphone does not shield you from prosecution.

Lemon indisputably was covering the protest for his YouTube show. The indictment against him concedes as much, repeatedly mentioning his "livestreaming" and noting his interviews with congregants and Jonathan Parnell, the pastor who was leading the service. But Lemon was unabashedly sympathetic to the protesters, their cause, and their illegal tactics. Lemon's own footage suggests he himself may have been guilty of trespassing. The indictment's allegations nevertheless fall short of making the case that his conduct met the elements of the two federal charges he faces.

Opponents of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) crackdown in Minnesota targeted Cities Church because one of its pastors, David Easterwood, directs enforcement and removal operations at ICE's field office in St. Paul. The moral logic here is hard to follow. Easterwood was not even at the church that morning, and the idea that the entire congregation bore responsibility for his work is absurd on its face. Unfazed by such considerations, the 30 or so protesters interrupted the service with chanting and self-righteously harangued the worshipers, impelling many of them to leave.

Those tactics were morally indefensible and plainly illegal. When the protesters quietly entered the church and sat down, they were not breaking the law. But once they were asked to leave and refused to do so, they were violating Minnesota's trespassing statute, which makes it a misdemeanor to enter "the premises of another and, without claim of right, [refuse] to depart from the premises on demand of the lawful possessor." The demonstration also qualified as disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor that includes disrupting a lawful "assembly or meeting" when you have "reasonable grounds to know that it will, or will tend to, alarm, anger or disturb others or provoke an assault or breach of the peace."

The Washington Post, which reviewed video of the protest, reports that "the footage does not show [Lemon] participating in the chants that disrupted the service." But toward the end of Lemon's brief interview with Parnell, the pastor told him, "I have to take care of my church and my family, so I ask that you actually would also leave this building, unless you're here to worship." Lemon's response was cagey. "I always worship," he said. "I am a Christian."

After that exchange, according to the Post, Lemon remained in the church for another seven minutes. Since Parnell's request can plausibly be interpreted as a "demand" that Lemon "depart from the premises," notwithstanding the "unless you're here to worship" proviso, Lemon arguably was trespassing at that point. But that apparent misdemeanor is not enough to establish that Lemon violated 18 USC 248 and 18 USC 241, the two federal statutes cited in the indictment.

Section 248, which authorizes a sentence up to a year for a first offense, applies to someone who, "by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with" a person exercising his religious freedom at a place of worship. "It does not appear that Don Lemon did any of those things directly," notes First Amendment attorney Marc Randazza, although he was "part of a group that did."

As evidence that Lemon violated Section 248, the indictment cites his interview with Parnell, saying he and two other defendants—protester Jerome Richardson and Georgia Fort, a local reporter—"approached the pastor and largely surrounded him (to his front and both sides), stood in close proximity to the pastor in an........

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