Seven people, including Former CNN anchor Don Lemon And another journalist – was Charged In violation of two different federal laws regarding A protest led to a boycott of a worship service at a church in Minnesota Earlier this month.
The group that stormed Sunday’s worship service was upset that the head of the local field office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement served as chaplain. President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials quickly denounced the protest Many religious leaders.
Lemon and a local reporter were covering the protest on January 18 at Cities Church in St. Paul. These two people and the five who helped organize the protest have been charged in complaints, but full details of the allegations against them have not yet been published because parts of the case files remain sealed.
The arrest of Lemon and freelance journalist Georgia Forte is particularly troubling for legal experts and media groups who worry about the chilling impact on coverage of the Trump administration.
David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in criminal law, said that the charges against… The demonstrators It is more defensible, given federal laws against disrupting the free exercise of worship. “The court will have to resolve this matter,” he added.
But he said the accusations against journalists were disturbing.
“Accusing journalists of being there to cover the disturbance does not mean they were part of the disturbance,” Harris said. “Don Lemon and other journalists are the way we, the public, find out what happens in these places,” he said. “They are our eyes and ears. The message being sent is that journalists like Don Lemon and others should feel afraid to do this.”
The two main laws cited in complaints against those arrested were passed more than a century ago — one rooted in efforts to prevent intimidation by the Ku Klux Klan in the post-Civil War era, the other to enable access to abortion clinics, although both had broader applications.
Here are some details about these laws:
The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, known as the FACE Act for short, was passed in 1994 to help ensure that patients seeking care at an abortion clinic — as well as the doctors and nurses who work there — could safely access facilities that often spark protests. This came in the wake of violent incidents targeting clinic workers.
A Republican-sponsored provision providing penalties for disrupting worship services was also included in the law.
Anti-abortion conservatives denounced the law, focusing on protecting clinics. Trump last year Sorry Several people were convicted of sieges of clinics. Its Ministry of Justice Reduce it The FACE Law prosecutes those accused of closing clinics, claiming there is a “weaponization” of the law.
But the US Supreme Court, despite overturning Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion across the country, last year to reject To hear the challenge to the constitutionality of FACE.
In 2025, 42 House Republicans co-sponsored legislation introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, to repeal the FACE Act. The conservative Heritage Foundation supported the stalled repeal efforts, calling the FACE Act an “ideological weapon” designed to suppress anti-abortion activism.
They claimed that the cult protection aspect of the law had not been invoked in the past. In 2025, the Department of Justice invoked the law in A lawsuit Against the demonstrators who protested outside the synagogue.
Anyone charged with a first violation of the FACE Act can be fined or sentenced to up to one year in prison. Subsequent crimes, or charges involving injury, death or damage, may face more severe penalties.
The other charges against Lemon and Fort were based on a law commonly known as the Anti-Rights Conspiracy Act, which was enacted shortly after the Civil War. It was originally designed to target vigilante groups such as the Ku Klux Klan. The law prohibits intimidating or preventing anyone from exercising their constitutional rights.
The Klan targeted those newly freed from slavery, but over the years the law was revised to apply to a wider range of constitutional rights violations. It has been used to charge suspects in the “Mississippi Burning” murders of three civil rights workers in 1964. It has been used in cases ranging from church fires and anti-Semitic intimidation to political conspiracy and witness tampering.
The law punishes up to 10 years in prison – or more if it involves injury, death or destruction of property.
Harris said it’s important for Americans to be able to see what’s happening so they can make their own decisions, rather than just hearing officials describe what happened.
“We’ve all had the experience of being told things that simply don’t match what we see with our own eyes,” he said. “Having journalists watch and report on these things is critical for us to be able to determine what our government is doing.”
Jonathan Maness, senior counsel at the MacArthur Center for Justice’s Illinois office, agrees.
“It is astonishing that the federal government is bringing criminal charges against journalists for their coverage of the protest,” said Maness, whose work focuses on government civil rights abuses.
“The crucial point is that the journalist covering the ongoing activities is not part of those activities,” he said. “None of this is to say that protesting here was a good thing or that it was permissible, but journalists should not be federally charged with conspiracy when they cover it.”
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AP reporter Tiffany Stanley contributed.
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