A federal judge in San Diego mostly refused to throw out a lawsuit by the Christian & Jewish Alliance, ruling the group adequately alleged that protesters blocked and disrupted three interfaith events at and near a California church.
U.S. District Judge Andrew Schopler, a Joe Biden appointee, denied the bulk of the defendants’ motion to dismiss claims under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act, known as the FACE Act, which bars obstruction of places of worship. He also denied the plaintiffs’ bid for a preliminary injunction that would have barred some defendants from future demonstrations at the church. Courthouse News reported the Wednesday hearing and the bench rulings.
The case turns on whether protest activity crossed into unlawful interference with worship and access. Eight named defendants and 40 unnamed defendants face the suit. Schopler left the core claims standing for further litigation while signaling that later stages could look different once evidence is tested.
Plaintiffs describe a March 19, 2025 gathering at Mission Church in Carlsbad, California, that drew about 400 attendees. Former Israeli Knesset member Einat Wilf spoke. The Christian & Jewish Alliance says it invited Mission Church members and guests to the interfaith program.
According to the alliance, protesters entered under false names, shouted epithets, resisted removal, and demonstrated outside with bullhorns while occupying entrance space. Defense counsel disputed the worship-disruption theory and said the indoor protest began only after Wilf’s speech started.
The following month, during an Easter service, protesters returned to the front of the church with bullhorns and signs that accused church members of supporting genocide, the plaintiffs say. On Sept. 7, 2025, demonstrators appeared at the Legacy International Center, marched in the parking lot with bullhorns and signs, and, the alliance claims, occasionally struck passing vehicles with their hands.
The alliance ties the pressure to its support for Israel and describes a sharper anti-Semitic climate in the United States since the Oct. 7, 2023 attack that opened the current Gaza war. It reports declining membership, canceled pro-Israel events over the last 13 months, and a chill on scheduling further programs.
Schopler stressed the early-stage standard that governs a motion to dismiss. He told the parties he must treat the pleaded facts as true and read them in the light most favorable to the plaintiffs.
Judge Schopler stated from the bench:
"I have to assume the facts are true and interpret it in the light most favorable to plaintiff."
On the FACE Act theory, he found the complaint sufficient to move forward. He said the defense was plausibly aware that conduct during a Wednesday night worship event would interfere with worship, even if the protesters claimed a different aim.
Judge Schopler explained:
"The defense was plausibly aware that the natural and probable consequences during a Wednesday night worship event would interfere with a worship exercise, even if their intent was to not disrupt such an exercise."
He also flagged the next battleground. Summary judgment, he noted, could produce a different result once the factual record is developed.
Judge Schopler added:
"I can see how on summary judgment you may win as the facts come out."
Defense attorney Thomas Harvey argued the defendants never targeted a worship portion of the March program. He said the indoor protest waited until Wilf began speaking and that a plan to wreck religious services would not have waited.
Harvey told the court:
"It was only after Dr. Wilf’s speech began that the defendants inside began their protest."
He continued:
"Everyone can understand, if your plan was to disrupt religious worship, you wouldn’t wait for that to be over."
Co-counsel Ben Gharagozli cast the dispute as a hot-button political fight over Israel and the Palestinians. He warned that the plaintiffs’ injunction theory would hand federal court leverage to any institution staging a pro-Israel event.
Gharagozli argued:
"I think we can all agree that Israel-Palestine is a hot-button issue."
He added:
"By their standard, any type of institution, religious or not, who wants to hold a pro-Israel event, should get a federal preliminary injunction."
About a dozen people sat in the audience in Palestinian keffiyeh scarves in a show of support for the defendants during the hearing.
Plaintiffs’ attorney John Brinkerhoff rejected the attempt to slice the evening into secular speech and protected worship. He said the entire event counted as worship and that the church cannot absorb the security and access risk the protests created.
Brinkerhoff told Schopler:
"The entire event was worship."
He pressed the point again: “The whole thing was.” On the injunction request, he framed canceled events and fear of repeating the confrontations as ongoing harm that money cannot fix.
Brinkerhoff said:
"The church and plaintiffs can’t take that risk."
He added:
"That chill is the irreparable harm."
Schopler denied the preliminary injunction. He also left unresolved a defense anti-SLAPP motion aimed at trespass claims. The FACE Act claims, as pleaded, survive for discovery and further motions.
The FACE Act supplies a federal cause of action against force, threat of force, or physical obstruction that injures, intimidates, or interferes with people seeking to exercise religion at a place of worship. Plaintiffs accuse the defendants of obstructing access and disrupting services at Mission Church and related sites. The complaint style referenced in court materials is Christian Jewish Alliance v. Brunner.
At this stage, Schopler has not found liability. He has held only that the alliance pleaded enough to continue. Defendants may still seek summary judgment, press the anti-SLAPP issues he has not decided, and contest whether any protest activity met the statute’s interference standard. Plaintiffs must still prove the facts they alleged, including entry under false names, occupation of entrances, bullhorn demonstrations, and any contact with vehicles.
Investigators and the parties will need to pin down who among the eight individuals and 40 unnamed defendants did what at each site, whether entrances were actually blocked, and how much of the March 19 program the court treats as a worship exercise. No public findings in the hearing account describe arrests, injuries, or criminal charges arising from the three episodes. Membership losses and canceled events remain plaintiff claims for proof later.
The ruling keeps a federal civil rights statute in play at the intersection of worship access and street protest over Israel. Churches hosting interfaith or pro-Israel speakers now have a live path to test FACE Act remedies when they claim entrances were seized and services disrupted. Protest groups retain the ability to argue that political speech timed to a guest lecture is not worship interference and that injunctions should not issue on that theory alone.
Schopler’s split result leaves both sides with work. The alliance failed to win an immediate ban on future demonstrations at the church. The defendants failed to end the FACE Act case at the pleading gate. The record built in discovery will decide whether the March infiltration claims, the Easter bullhorn line, and the September parking-lot march meet the statute or fall as protected demonstration.
When activists treat a church doorway like a political stage, the law still draws a hard line at obstruction of worship, and federal judges should enforce it without apology.
