My post on Judge Kollar-Kotelly’s silly order in a prosecution under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE Act) reminds me that I can take considerable credit for the odd but important fact that the Act, codified as 18 U.S.C. § 248, extends its protections not only to “reproductive health services” facilities but also to places of religious worship. Specifically, subsection 248(a)(2) makes it a federal crime to use “force or threat or force” or “physical obstruction” to “injure, intimidate, or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship,” and subsection 248(a)(3) makes it a federal crime to “intentionally damage[] or destroy[] the property of a place of religious worship.”
I was a Judiciary Committee staffer to Senator Orrin Hatch when the FACE Act went through the committee in 1993. At the time, the bill protected only “reproductive health services” facilities. In order to try to complicate passage, I drafted a set of amendments to extend the bill’s protections to other facilities that encountered threats and obstruction (e.g., animal-testing labs). To my surprise, Senator Teddy Kennedy’s staffer told me that Kennedy was willing to add in my amendment on places of religious worship, as black churches were being victimized.
Alas, my effort to have the title of the legislation changed from the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to the Freedom of Access to Religious and Clinic Entrances Act—the FARCE Act—was not as successful.