The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act has got to go, House Republicans determined during their hearing designed to review the Biden administration’s abuse of the three-decade-old law.
The hearing titled “From Tool to Weapon: The FACE Act and the Dangers of Federalizing Criminal Law” followed the Trump Department of Justice’s 882-page report detailing exactly how President Joe Biden and his top law enforcement agency weaponized the FACE Act to imprison nearly two dozen peaceful pro-life protesters.
The DOJ investigators, who initiated the probe after President Donald Trump signed a February 2025 executive order committed to “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias,” found that the former administration used “biased enforcement” of the FACE Act in a blatant violation of Americans’ rights. This uneven application of the law, communications revealed, was completed in collusion with abortion activists who supplied the DOJ with “real-time” reports of pro-life protest activity.
At least four Biden-era prosecutors were fired for their roles in the lawfare shortly before the report debuted, but House Republicans say it’s not enough.
“This hearing was about shining a harsh, overdue light on left-wing groups that have targeted conservatives — especially pro-life Americans — for years with little to no accountability,” Rep. Chip Roy, chairman of the House Subcommittee on the Constitution and Limited Government, told The Federalist in a statement. “The FACE Act has been twisted into a weapon, used to bludgeon citizens whose only ‘offense’ is living out their religious convictions. That abuse cannot stand. Recent actions against organizations like the SPLC show that the tide is starting to turn — but it’s not enough. Accountability must be real, it must be consistent, and it must come now.”
In his opening statement, hearing witness Christopher Ferrara, senior counsel at the Thomas More Society, emphasized that the FACE Act is not required to prosecute acts of violence or threats of force thanks to existing local and state laws. Yet the law was repeatedly used by the DOJ, particularly under Biden, to target pro-life Christians and create “a new category of federal offenses, civil and criminal, based on what were truly matters of local law involving citizens and other minor offenses committed in the context of nonviolent civil disobedience.”
“The FACE Act has been used to impose ridiculous injunctions, totally unheard of in any other context. Speech-free buffer zones, bubble zones, and even floating bubble zones around clinics have created for pro-life advocates and them only what Justice Scalia described … ‘an entirely separate abridged edition of the First Amendment,’” Ferrara continued.
Eva Edl, a 90-year-old FACE Act weaponization victim and Yugoslavian communist concentration camp survivor, also used her testimony time to “plead with our government to repeal the FACE Act because it is targeting people who want to do right.”
“After all, we have enough laws that if somebody does something wrong, we have the means to punish them. I plead with our government to stop the killing and go back to the foundational principle that our forefathers built this country on: that all human life has equal value before God,” Edl said.
Previously reported data suggested the Biden administration disproportionately focused its FACE Act prosecutions on pro-lifers who prayed, sang, and evangelized at abortion facilities. The Trump administration’s latest report also determined the Biden DOJ requested and ultimately secured sentences that were longer for pro-lifers — an average of 26.8 months and 14 months respectively — than for pro-abortion defendants, who averaged 12.3 months and 3 months respectively.
“This should concern every American, regardless of their views on the underlying issue, because the real problem isn’t just how this law has been abused, it’s the permanent expansion of federal power it represents,” Roy said during his time at the hearing.
“Plain and simple, the Biden Administration weaponized the FACE Act against conservatives and Pro-Life activists. We must repeal it!” Rep. Bob Onder, R-Mo., urged.
Democrat legislators used their time during the hearing to complain about the frequency of FACE Act hearings and downplay the two-tiered system of justice that they used to target their political enemies. The Democrats’ witness also refused to indulge Rep. Brandon Gill’s questions about her “favorite type of abortion,” which he described in gruesome detail.
Republicans, however, remained unfazed and continued with the task at hand. As House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan noted, just last week the Southern Poverty Law Center, which ignored the historic violence against churches and pregnancy centers in the week of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, was indicted for shuttling secret fraudulent payments to racist groups, making now the “right time to have this hearing.”
“The Southern Poverty Law Center, who said, quote, ‘the pro-life movement is fundamentally anti-democratic,’ was running a scam, paying $3 million to, quote, ‘informants’ to go foment the hate they told the world they were actually supposed to be fighting. This is exactly the right time to have this hearing, for goodness’ sake,” Jordan said. “I mean, the Southern Poverty Law Center that the Biden Justice Department used to train lawyers to go deal with the FACE Act. You’ve got to be kidding me.”
Thirteen House Judiciary Committee Republicans voted in June 2025 to advance a bill that would repeal the “unconstitutional” law the Biden administration weaponized to silence and jail peaceful pro-life activists. As pro-life organizations have repeatedly noted, a Republican-controlled Congress’s failure to do away with the FACE Act would enable future administrations to charge and imprison people who are committed to protecting unborn life.
