A new bill signed into law by Gov. Hobbs on Monday makes “interfering with a religious service or religious activity” a public offense potentially worthy of a felony, sparking backlash from activists and mixed reactions from religious organizations.

House Bill 4117 was initially conceived to address a “rise in antisemitism and the disruption of synagogues,” according to Tucson Rep. Alma Hernandez. Those who violate the law can catch a Class 1 misdemeanor — which carries a six-month jail term — if they “obstruct” worshippers’ ability to enter and exit a religious activity, including in outdoor and adjacent spaces nearby. The same penalty exists if someone makes “protracted commotion, utterance or display” inside religious venues that disturb services. 

But the bill also lists scenarios where impeding a religious service can result in a felony, or up to a 18 months in prison: if a person is found to have violated the section more than once, if they threaten or physically intimidate worshippers, or if they obstruct a place of religious worship alongside two or more people.

The bill carves out an exemption to the new section for “peaceful picketing, protesting or other expressive activity,” as well as for law enforcement or first responders called to duty. But while some celebrate the bill as an increased protection for worshippers’ First Amendment rights, others ask what the cost of those protections are — and argue that the bill detracts more rights writ large than it adds.

Bill co-sponsors Sen. John Kavanagh, Rep. Teresa Martinez and Rep. Michael Way were not available for comment on this story, while co-sponsor Rep. Keshel declined to comment.

A history of religious protesting

Demonstrations against religious institutions have taken place across the United States since its founding.

One memorable example of a mass demonstration which occurred in front and inside of a house of worship is from 1989, when a group of more than 7,000 activists from the New York AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power protested the Roman Catholic Archdiocese in response to its opposition toward LGBTQ+ rights, sex education and condom distribution during the AIDS crisis. 

The activists, many of whom even entered St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan, staged a mass “die-in” where they chanted, laid on outside streets to block traffic, chained themselves to church pews and even crushed a communion wafer. While at least 111 protestors were arrested for interrupting the mass, the protest was effective in drawing new visibility toward both ACT-UP and the AIDS crisis.

“(People) were now having conversations they would never have had otherwise,” said Arizona’s “Hip Historian” Marshall Shore, who leads the Arizona LGBT+ History Project and lived in New York during the time of the protest. “Whether or not they agreed, or even knew what AIDS was (before), suddenly it was the talk of the town.”

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While protestors in Arizona, including the state’s own ACT-UP chapter, have historically not gone so far as to enter houses of worship or disrupt services, multiple demonstrations have taken place in the “outdoor, adjacent spaces” to religious services that this bill seeks to protect.

In 2014, more than 100 protestors demonstrated outside of Tempe’s Faithful Word Baptist Church during a Sunday sermon by its pastor, Steven Anderson, who had gone viral for saying that “executing homos” would help eliminate HIV and AIDS. 

Now, some of the protest’s primary organizers fear that HB 4117 will discourage people from conducting similar demonstrations.

Samantha Trad was chair of Legislative District 26’s West Phoenix Democrats when she organized the protest of the Faithful Word church, and said she remembers singing peace songs with a crowd as some members of the congregation came out brandishing guns. 

She had felt a lot of fear then, even though nobody was hurt during the demonstration. Today, Trad is concerned that people will use HB 4117 to more easily sue protesters that don’t have the money to fight in court.

“It’s so critical now more than ever that people be allowed to protest … that’s the next play in the fascist book, is to not let people gather in large numbers,” she said. “I do think it’s important that people should be safe practicing their religion, (but) I worry that things like this could get muddied.”

Evan Clark, the executive director for Atheists United in California, helped organize the protest with Trad when he lived in Arizona. He said the new bill is redundant due to preexisting trespassing laws and that it invites potential abuses of freedom.

“The definitions around interruption, depending on the organization, could be completely different, and then ultimately we have less free speech in religious spaces, which are one of the spaces that most Americans interact with weekly,” Clark told LOOKOUT. 

He argued that if someone is abused by a pastor and leaves the congregation, they will not be able to speak up during a service to gain accountability without fear of arrest. And that’s not an example from far afield: An event similar to what Clark described took place at Christ Church of the Valley in Peoria last March, where congregants, including survivors, protested church leaders for supporting a convicted sex offender. Christ Church of the Valley did not respond to requests for comment on the bill.

Protecting (and chilling) protest activity

Secular AZ, a nonpartisan advocacy organization that works to address complaints regarding separation of church and state, said they believe HB 4117 is constitutional “on its face,” but also that it has the potential to violate First Amendment rights.

“The main legal concern (of this bill) is its vagueness,” Sagarika Nandi, a Secular AZ extern, told LOOKOUT. “When criminal statutes use broad and undefined terms, like ‘religious activity,’ it increases the risk of inconsistent enforcement and potential chilling of constitutionally-protected speech.”

A memorandum by Nandi and Dianne Post, the organization’s legal director, states that courts across the country have accepted a wide range of actions as “religious activity,” including the sharing of religious pamphlets and fundraising for donations. 

Because of this, Post backed up previous claims by activists and legislators that HB 4117 could silence dissent against protestors outside abortion clinics or the Westboro Baptist Church, as well as the suggestion that it could be used against congregants protesting religious leadership.

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“Even though they put it in there that (the bill) is not going to violate first amendment rights, that’s going to be exactly the question,” Post said.

Sen. Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills) previously dismissed concerns from reproductive health advocates, saying that anti abortion protests do not become religious services just because someone says a prayer.

Meanwhile, Mohyeddin Abdulaziz, a cofounder of the Arizona Palestine Solidarity Alliance, said he believes HB 4117 will use antisemitism and Jewish religious life as a guise to kill criticism of Israel by activists.

The APSA has occasionally protested outside religious spaces in the past, such as in 2024, when the organization and its supporters demonstrated outside Congregation Beth Israel Synagogue. They had protested the synagogue for hosting an event with Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, who has been criticized for equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism. 

Congregation Beth Israel did not respond to requests for comment on the bill.

Abdulaziz said that APSA’s activism targets the “political activities and actions” taking place in institutions of all kinds — not specifically religious services or houses of worship. 

“What constitutes an anti-religious protest versus a political protest at an institution that may be defined as a religious place, but the activity there is not religious?” Abdulaziz said. “(This bill) just gives (fascists) another tool to make our activities as human rights organizers much more difficult.”

“I’m not naive.”

Several prominent Jewish organizations have advocated for and been involved in HB 4117’s passage, including ADL Desert Region, Center for Jewish Philanthropy of Greater Phoenix and Jewish Philanthropies of Southern Arizona. 

ADL Desert Region, in particular, helped legislators workshop the bill from its original language targeting indoor disruptions within a house of worship to be inclusive, to the amended bill encompassing public spaces, according to Sen. Kavanagh’s office.

The organization said in a press release that HB 4117 is “an important step forward for Arizonans to access their houses of worship without fear of obstruction and interference.”

Phoenix’s Dream City Church, which has held multiple far-right political events including an event in April with President Donald Trump and Turning Point USA President Erika Kirk, also told LOOKOUT that they support the bill. Meanwhile, the National Council of Jewish Women Arizona and the Council of American Islamic Relations Arizona have said they oppose it.. 

Islamic Community Center of Phoenix President Usama Shami has mixed feelings about HB 4117, both as a leader in the Muslim community and as a Palestinian. Though the Council for American Islamic Relations in Arizona doesn’t support the bill, Shami said that it could be an additional layer of protection for the mosque, which has been subjected to “anti-Islam” protests, physical intimidation and vandalism in the past. 

But he disagrees with the bill’s protections for outdoor religious activities and said the center was not consulted at any point in its drafting, despite its leaders having approached state senators about creating safe zones in the past.

“I’m not naive … I don’t think (HB 4117’s) first intent is to protect the rights of Muslims,” Shami said. “(Our) community and other faith communities can benefit from it if written and implemented properly, but I do understand that there are certain motives to this, and that the people who introduced (the bill) have other things in mind.”