The Trump administration has indicated that a law historically used to prosecute pro-life protesters should instead be applied to individuals accused of harassing Jewish worshippers at a California synagogue.
On Friday, the Department of Justice (DOJ) filed a “statement of interest” in support of a lawsuit alleging that a violent mob of anti-Israel activists unlawfully blocked access to a synagogue in June 2024. The DOJ argued that the actions described in the lawsuit violate the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, a law that pro-life conservatives have sought to repeal but that also provides protections for places of worship.
“The Statement of Interest from the Department of Justice is a most welcome development in our case against antisemitic rioters,” Carly F. Gammill of the pro-Israel group StandWithUs told the Daily Caller News Foundation. Gammill directs the organization’s “Center for Legal Justice,” which filed the lawsuit July 24 before amending it to include more defendants.
“We are immensely grateful for the government’s recognition that members of the Jewish community must be able to engage in religious exercise without intimidation or fear for their physical safety — and for the government’s demonstrated commitment to using the legal means at its disposal to combat antisemitism,” Gammill said.
Attorneys have filed a lawsuit against the activist groups CodePink, Palestinian Youth Movement, Honor the Earth, and the Westchester People’s Action Coalition (WESPAC) Foundation, along with two unnamed defendants, over a violent protest targeting an event on Israeli real estate at Los Angeles’s Adas Torah Synagogue.
The lawsuit describes multiple assaults and protesters who allegedly “bear sprayed Jewish people and others present” and blockaded the building. Videos from the incident captured tense standoffs between protesters and pro-Israel demonstrators, including footage of a pro-Israel protester being wrestled to the ground and bloodied. Despite the violence, the only reported arrest that day was of a pro-Israel demonstrator, who was charged with carrying an illegal spiked flagpole. Former President Joe Biden called out the “un-American” violence a day later in an X post.
The DOJ’s Friday filing said if the lawsuit’s descriptions are accurate, they amount to “a physical obstruction within the meaning of the FACE Act” and are therefore unlawful. The DOJ said it is interested in the case because it is “using all available and appropriate legal tools to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful antisemitic harassment and violence.”
Conservatives, including Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX), have called on Congress to repeal the FACE Act, arguing that the Biden administration disproportionately used it to prosecute nonviolent pro-life protesters outside abortion clinics. During his first week back in office, President Donald Trump pardoned several of these activists, including elderly individuals who had been sentenced to years in prison under the law.