Protecting Prayer From Intimidation

The New York Sun is happy to be the first newspaper to endorse the Right To Worship Act. That is a bipartisan bill designed “to protect the right to the free exercise of religion.” It is being introduced in the House and Senate today. The measure is backed by, among others, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Congressman Tom Suozzi of Queens, New York. It would protect worshippers from being threatened or intimidated “at a scheduled religious service.”It is an important measure in our view, both nationally and in New York. It is being laid before Congress in a season that has seen a rise of antisemitism across the land and of protests at synagogues that appear designed to intimidate worshipers. It is a shocking trend in a country that in the First Amendment to its Constitution marked the primary importance of protecting the free exercise of religion — first in line ahead of all the other rights. There have been in recent months some horrifying examples of intimidating protests at synagogues and other houses of worship. These include a protest at Cities Church in Minnesota, where what the sponsors of the bill call an “organized disruption” actually made their way into the sanctuary. In the Columbia District, the sponsors of the bill note, worshippers at historic churches face protests “timed to coincide with services.”A particularly threatening protest erupted in May at Manhattan, where congregants at Park East Synagogue in New York City, the sponsors of the House of Worship Act report, “faced hostile demonstrators on their way to services.” Mr. Cruz, according to Jewish Insider, notes that the Bill of Rights “guarantees every American the right to freely exercise their faith, and Congress has a duty to ensure that guarantee is met.”“In recent years, we have seen organized acts of hate meant to disrupt and deny that right,” Mr. Cruz asserts in respect of the need for the legislation. The Texan, a Republican, is a co-sponsor of the measure alongside a Michigan Democrat, Senator Elissa Slotkin. A North Carolina Republican, Brad Knott, is one of the other co-sponsors of the measure in the House, underscoring the bipartisan nature of support for the proposal.Is it really necessary to bring in federal legislation in respect of this problem? The Sun thinks so. There have been several efforts, after all, to get an effective measure passed at, say, New York, only to have them watered down or undercut in the city council or objected to by the mayor. He did sign one relatively weak measure, and he vetoed a measure designed to extend the protection of the right to worship to schools. The proposed law appears to be designed to pass muster with First Amendment considerations regarding free speech and assembly rights. Backers of the measure say the “bill says nothing about what can be said, it prohibits disruptive activity.” The bill’s penalties, regrettably, are “civil only,” with no criminal liability established. Limits on protests within “a 100-foot area with time limitations,” the bill’s supporters say, are in line with Supreme Court precedents.Advocates of the bill say the legislation has been scrutinized from the constitutional viewpoint by the Justice Department, the firm of Paul, Weiss, and Ohio’s former solicitor general, Benjamin Flowers. Critics of buffer zones like those envisioned in the bill suggest that they should be “imposed only when there are competing constitutional rights at stake” and protesters get “adequate ways to communicate their message,” the ACLU cautions.The text of the legislation guards against this overreach by limiting only “conduct that meaningfully interferes with the ability of people to participate” in a “scheduled religious service, to the extent that the conduct causes a substantial interruption to the service’s normal operation.” It’s hard to argue with the logic of such provisions amid today’s tensions. As the bill’s backers aver: “The right to pray without intimidation belongs to everyone.”

Protecting Prayer From Intimidation

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