{"id":1715205,"date":"2022-10-28T14:33:43","date_gmt":"2022-10-28T18:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1715205"},"modified":"2022-10-28T14:34:11","modified_gmt":"2022-10-28T18:34:11","slug":"the-face-act-is-unconstitutional-its-past-time-congress-got-rid-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/the-face-act-is-unconstitutional-its-past-time-congress-got-rid-of-it\/","title":{"rendered":"The FACE Act Is Unconstitutional. It\u2019s Past Time Congress Got Rid Of It"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fthe-face-act-is-unconstitutional-its-past-time-congress-got-rid-of-it%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1715205&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>Just this year, the Department of Justice under Attorney General Merrick Garland, a Biden appointee, has <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/10\/19\/the-fbi-has-indicted-22-pro-life-protesters-and-zero-pregnancy-center-firebombers\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">announced<\/a> indictments of 22 peaceful pro-life protesters, trumping up bogus charges based on the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. At best, that law creates duplicative protections against crimes that are already prosecutable under state and local criminal statutes. At worst, it is a weapon for federal law enforcement to unconstitutionally brandish against its political dissidents. <\/p>\n<p>Right now, it has become the latter. It\u2019s past time for Congress to repeal the FACE Act and do away with the reckless, state-sponsored terrorizing of innocent Americans that the law enables.<\/p>\n<p> Provisions of the FACE Act <\/p>\n<p>Passed in 1994, the FACE Act <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/uscode\/text\/18\/248\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">criminalizes<\/a> anyone who:<\/p>\n<p>\u2026by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person because that person is or has been, or in order to intimidate such person or any other person or any class of persons from, obtaining or providing reproductive health services\u2026<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s worth noting that the phrase \u201creproductive health services\u201d does not single out abortion facilities, but legally includes pro-life pregnancy centers. The DOJ, however, has yet to announce a single indictment for the dozens of attacks on pregnancy centers that followed the leak of the Supreme Court\u2019s <em>Dobbs v. Jackson<\/em> decision that overturned <em>Roe v. Wade<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>The statute also criminalizes the same behavior toward \u201cany person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship,\u201d and criminalizes intentional damage or destruction to a place of worship or pregnancy-related facility because of the facility\u2019s purpose. <\/p>\n<p> Denial of First and 14th Amendment Rights <\/p>\n<p>On its face, none of the statute\u2019s provisions may seem objectionable (though, as experience has shown, \u201cintimidate\u201d and \u201cinterfere\u201d are interpreted well outside their stated definitions). But even properly applied, the law would invite unnecessary and political intervention by federal authorities into situations that could be effectively handled by local authorities. <\/p>\n<p>In more sinister hands, the FACE Act is used to tyrannize law-abiding abortion opponents. Recently, it\u2019s been invoked to send dozens of armed FBI agents to raid the home of pro-life Catholic father Mark Houck and arrest him in front of his wife and children. His crime? After a Planned Parenthood escort repeatedly harassed his young son and ignored Houck\u2019s demands that he stop, Houck\u2019s wife says, he pushed the man away from his child. Legal <a href=\"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/2022\/10\/04\/with-new-documents-the-biden-administrations-targeting-of-a-pro-life-dad-just-got-crazier\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">documents<\/a> even indicate the action had nothing to do with the facility\u2019s provision of abortions, making the FACE Act inapplicable, but the politicized DOJ has used it to terrorize Houck\u2019s family anyway.<\/p>\n<p>While the FACE Act has teed up left-wing bureaucrats to target pro-lifers, the DOJ has denied <a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.cornell.edu\/constitution\/amendmentxiv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">equal protection of the laws<\/a> to pro-life pregnancy clinics, in violation of the 14th Amendment. By refusing to apply the law <a href=\"https:\/\/catholicvote.org\/pregnancy-center-attack-tracker\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">to protect pregnancy centers<\/a> (as well as churches) from <a href=\"https:\/\/downloads.frc.org\/EF\/EF22F17.pdf\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">dozens of instances<\/a> of<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Both in its application and on its face, the FACE Act is an abuse of power by bureaucrats increasingly hostile to political dissidents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1353,"featured_media":1715208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1715205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cndimages.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/IMG_2758-scaled-1.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1353"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1715205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1715205\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1715208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1715205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1715205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1715205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}