No. of Recommendations: 5
Now- you or I may claim that so and so’s worship is illegitimate. I know for a fact that many claim that my particular worship style and content are illegitimate, but when we begin attempting to shut down the worship of others via disruption, that most certainly takes a bite out of the first amendment.
This has come up in a few threads now. I hate to be pedantic...well, okay, I'm a lawyer, so I don't hate to be pedantic. But at the risk of being pedantic, the First Amendment refers to your right to be protected from government infringement on speech.
I get it - worship, like speech, is one of the core activities that is covered by the First Amendment protections against infringement by government. And the FACE Act makes explicit reference to the protected class being those people who "exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of worship." But again, there's no constitutional protection against worship being infringed against by private parties - just the government. Which is why the FACE Act isn't merely duplicative of existing protections.
