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Seven people, including former CNN anchor Don Lemon<\/a> and another journalist \u2014 have been charged<\/a> with violating two different federal laws in connection with the protest that interrupted a worship service at a Minnesota church<\/a> earlier this month.<\/p>\n The group that barged into a worship service that Sunday was upset that the head of a local field office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement serves as a pastor. The protest was quickly denounced by President Donald Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi and other officials, as well as many religious leaders<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lemon and a local reporter were covering the protest on Jan. 18 at the Cities Church in St. Paul. Those two and five people who helped organize the protest have all been charged in complaints, but the full details of the allegations against them haven’t been released yet because parts of the case files remains sealed.<\/p>\n The arrests of Lemon and independent journalist Georgia Fort are especially troubling for legal experts and media groups who worry about the chilling effect on coverage of the Trump administration.<\/p>\n David Harris, a University of Pittsburgh law professor specializing in criminal law, said the charges against the protesters<\/a> are more tenable, given the federal laws against disrupting the free exercise of worship. \u201cA court will have to sort that out,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n But charges against reporters are troubling, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cCharging journalists for being there covering the disruption does not mean they were part of the disruption,\u201d Harris said. \u201cDon Lemon and other journalists are the way that we the public are finding out what is happening in these spaces,\u201d he said. \u201cThey are our eyes and ears. The message that is being sent is that journalists like Don Lemon and others should feel intimidated from doing this.\u201d<\/p>\n The two key laws cited in the complaints against those who were arrested were passed more than a century apart \u2014 one rooted in efforts to prevent intimidation by the post-Civil War Ku Klux Klan and the other to enable access to abortion clinics, though they both have had wider applications. <\/p>\n Here are some details about those laws:<\/p>\n The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances law, known as the FACE Act for short, was passed in 1994 to help ensure that patients seeking care at an abortion clinic \u2014 as well as the doctors and nurses who work there \u2014 could safely access the facilities that often draw protests. It followed incidents of violence targeting clinic workers.<\/p>\n A Republican-sponsored clause that provided for penalties for disruptions of worship services was also incorporated into the law.<\/p>\n Anti-abortion conservatives have denounced the law, focusing on the clinic protections. Trump last year pardoned<\/a> several people convicted for blockading clinics. His Justice Department scaled back<\/a> FACE Act prosecutions of those accused of blocking clinics, claiming there had been a \u201cweaponization\u201d of the law.<\/p>\n But the U.S. Supreme Court, despite having overturned the Roe v. Wade decision that had legalized abortion nationwide, last year refused<\/a> to hear a challenge to the constitutionality of FACE.<\/p>\n In 2025, 42 House Republicans co-sponsored legislation, introduced by Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, to repeal the FACE Act. The conservative Heritage Foundation supported the stalled repeal effort, calling the FACE Act \u201can ideological weapon\u201d designed to suppress anti-abortion activity.<\/p>\n