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FACT CHECK: Does the FACE Act Protect Churches?

17 1
21.01.2026

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........

© The Daily Signal