# FACE Act The **Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act**, signed in **May 1994**, makes it a federal crime to use force, threats of force, or physical obstruction to injure, intimidate, or interfere with someone obtaining or providing reproductive health services — **or** with someone exercising First Amendment religious rights at a place of worship. That second clause is regularly omitted from descriptions of the statute and is the key to understanding the fights over it. **FACE protects churches and clinics under the same provision.** ## Why it exists The Act followed a period of organized clinic blockades and escalating violence, including the murder of Dr. David Gunn in Pensacola in 1993. Existing state trespass law had proven inadequate against coordinated, multi-state campaigns, and the federal government had limited tools. FACE supplied criminal penalties and a civil cause of action. It was challenged on First Amendment grounds — that it punished protest — and upheld, on the reasoning that it reaches **conduct** (obstruction, force, threats) rather than speech. ## Why it matters for the KB **1. It is the vault's clearest case study in selective enforcement as policy.** A statute that protects both clinics and churches can be enforced asymmetrically in either direction without amending a word of it. Which half gets charged, and how vigorously, is a prosecutorial choice that shifts between administrations — and enforcement posture, not statutory text, determines what the law actually does. That is the same finding the vault reaches at [[Preclearance]] and the [[Bank Secrecy Act]]: **the machinery matters more than the rule.** **2. Pardons reach backward in a way enforcement policy cannot.** Clemency for people convicted under FACE does something categorically different from declining to prosecute: it unwinds completed judicial outcomes. The vault's interest is in the combination — retrospective clemency plus prospective non-enforcement effectively suspends a statute that remains on the books, without Congress acting. **3. The dual-protection design is a lesson in drafting.** Whether the 1994 drafters included the place-of-worship clause to build a coalition or on principle, the effect is that any argument for gutting FACE has to explain why churches should lose protection too. Statutes that bundle protections for opposed constituencies are harder to repeal and easier to enforce selectively — which is a real tradeoff, not a free lunch. > [!warning] Current enforcement posture not verified > The 2025–26 record — pardons of FACE Act offenders, any DOJ enforcement-policy change, and current charging practice — was **not verified for this page**. The HCR 08-03 material touches it. Confirm against DOJ announcements and the clemency record before writing specifics. ## The Cities Church prosecution (2026) The clearest test of the dual-protection clause came in Minnesota. After protesters halted a January 18, 2026 service at a St. Paul church whose pastor was the acting director of ICE's local field office, the Justice Department charged about 39 people under the FACE Act and the Ku Klux Klan Act, including two journalists. The defendants argue selective prosecution: the same administration pardoned or dropped FACE Act cases against anti-abortion protesters at clinics. See [[Cities Church Protest]]. ## See Also - [[Abortion Politics]] · [[Anti-Abortion Movement]] · [[Department of Justice]] - [[Preclearance]] · [[Bank Secrecy Act]] — the enforcement-architecture pattern - [[Pardons as Currency]] · [[Trump 2025 Pardon Spree]]