Church Protestors Freed as DOJ Signals Aggressive Use of Historic Civil Rights Law Against Protestors
January 27, 2026
Adam Safwat, partner and co-chair of the firm’s White Collar Crime & Government Investigations practice, recently spoke with MPR News about three activists who had been charged with federal civil rights violations for disrupting a church service in St. Paul. Safwat told MPR News that the government may find it challenging to prove that the activists entered Cities Church with the intent to deprive the parishioners of their First Amendment right to exercise their faith.
“Certainly they disrupted that,” Safwat said after viewing video of the demonstration. “But there’s no indication that they entered with the intent of terrifying them, trying to dissuade them from worshipping, trying to scatter them from the church, trying to prevent them from entering the church.”
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