The case arose after a youth pastor, Matthew Snatchko, was arrested at the Roseville Galleria Mall in 2007 for striking up a casual conversation with two other shoppers about faith. Although Snatchko had first obtained the shoppers’ permission to broach the subject, a nearby store employee disapproved and called mall security guards, who arrested Snatchko. Criminal charges were later dropped, but attorneys with Pacific Justice Institute filed suit to challenge the mall’s tight restrictions on speech.

Under the mall’s rules, shoppers are not allowed to engage in conversations about potentially controversial topics like religion or politics, unless they already know the person they are talking to. Another mall rule bans the wearing of any clothing with religious or political messages.

After a Placer County Superior Court judge upheld the mall’s rules in 2008, Pacific Justice Institute appealed to the Third Appellate District in Sacramento. Written briefing at the Court of Appeal concluded last week. The case is proceeding in state court and is based on state constitutional provisions because those provisions, unlike the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, extend free speech protections to some non-governmental settings like shopping malls.

PJI Staff Attorney Matthew McReynolds, who submitted the appellate briefs, has been mystified by the mall’s adherence to its draconian rules. “It’s surprising that mall owners think they can arrest patrons for engaging in casual conversations,” he said. “While a ‘don’t talk to strangers’ rule may be good for kids, enforcing it against adults is absurd, and we think it violates California’s free speech guarantees.”

PJI President Brad Dacus commented, “Singling out religious speech for punishment violates our most basic principles of free expression. If anyone can be arrested for wearing a Christian t-shirt or mentioning God in a shopping mall, we have lost not only our freedom, but our sanity as a society.”

PJI affiliate attorney Timothy Smith, of the Sacramento firm McKinley & Smith, served pro bono as Snatchko’s lead counsel in the trial court and continues to serve as part of the appellate team. —From the Pacific Justice Institute

“Christians shouldn’t be arrested and charged as criminals for expressing their beliefs on public property. They have the same First Amendment rights as anyone else in America,” said ADF-allied attorney Demetrios Stratis of Fair Lawn. “A person cannot be charged with a crime just because a school official has a complete misunderstanding of the First Amendment or doesn’t like what that person has to say. We are pleased that we prevailed in court in getting these unwarranted criminal charges dropped.” Click here to read the rest from the Allied Defense Fund.

NH Christians arrested, asked: ‘Where is your God now?’

State law against ‘unreasonable or loud’ noise used to arrest Christians sharing gospel but not enforced against town-sponsored concerts

HAMPTON, N.H. — Alliance Defense Fund allied attorneys filed suit Wednesday in federal court on behalf of two Christians arrested for sharing their faith and singing worship songs on a public sidewalk in the Hampton Beach area. Police arrested the two men, charging them under a state law against “unreasonable or loud” noise, but the law has not been used against other much louder activities in the very busy beach district, including bands sponsored by the village precinct to increase business in the area. —From the Alliance Defense Fund, Oct 8, 2009

***Read about what happened when I prayed illegally at a city council meeting by clicking here.***

If this passes, sharing your Christian faith might become illegal. Click here to read more and to sign the petition.

DETROIT, MI - A federal judge has denied an evangelical group’s request for permission to hand out Christian literature on sidewalks at an Arab festival in Dearborn, Michigan.

U.S. District Judge Nancy Edmunds denied Anaheim, Calif.-based Arabic Christian Perspective’s request for a temporary restraining order. The group describes itself in its court filing as “a national ministry established for the purpose of proclaiming the Holy Gospel of Jesus Christ to Muslims …(that) travels around the country attending and distributing Christian literature at Muslim festivals and mosques.” Read the rest here from OneNewsNow.

Archived here:

 A lawyer for the group said it would seek a permanent injunction against the city of Dearborn. “It’s not over,” said Robert J. Muise of the Thomas More Law Center, an Ann Arbor-based Christian rights advocacy group.

Another lawyer on the case said the Dearborn officials action could be part of what he described as a broader Muslim legal attack on critics of Islam in our “Judeo-Christian nation.”

“Muslims are using the courts in this country to stop our free speech rights,” said William J. Becker Jr., a Los Angeles attorney who has represented a number of prominent critics of Islam.

The 14th annual Dearborn Arab International Festival is expected to draw hundreds of thousands of visitors Friday through Sunday to the city that has the Detroit area’s greatest concentration of Arab-Americans.

Festival organizer Fay Beydoun said the evangelical group was being offered a good spot in an area with a number of other religious, nonprofit and political groups. “You have to pass right in front of it to get anywhere,” said Beydoun, executive director of the American Arab Chamber of Commerce.

Southeastern Michigan has about 300,000 people with roots in the Arab world. It includes large numbers of both Muslims and Christians.

The group sued Dearborn after police told the Rev. George Saieg members would need to restrict literature distribution to a designated table-and-booth section of the festival site.

The city said safely accommodating the 150,000 daily festival-goers requires limits on where people can leaflet. It said other Christian and Muslim groups already have tables and booths for distributing material at the festival.

City officials say anyone is free to have conversations — but not leaflet — on sidewalks within the festival’s barricades.

“It appears to be a legitimate governmental interest for crowd control and safety,” Edmunds said in denying the request. “The festival area is more akin to a fair than a normal city street.”

Becker said the case is similar to one he handled in Los Angeles, in which Jews for Jesus member Cyril Gordon won about $250,000 after being arrested for trespassing in 2006 outside an Israel Independence Day event in a park. “This is a case where your right, my right and anybody’s right to walk down the street and express their views is being disrupted by a police action,” he said.

An official of the Council of American-Islamic Relations said Arabic Christian Perspective was asking for special treatment. “They should abide by the rules and purchase a booth like the other religious groups,” said Dawud Walid, executive director of the group’s Michigan chapter. “Christians can talk about Christianity and Muslims can promote Islam. This is the right we have as Americans.”

We leave Tuesday morning with a large group from Arabic Christian Perspective (ACP) to head to Dearborn, but even before we board the plane, there is already trouble.

The City of Dearborn has informed ACP that we cannot distribute tracts and Bibles ALONG THE PUBLIC SIDEWALKS of the city around the festival area. Apparently some of the locals who have attended the festival in the past were offended by our activities and have convinced the police that our activities should be restricted. A Christian public-interest law firm sent a letter to Dearborn yesterday informing them of our constitutional rights to do what we plan to do. Nevertheless, the police dept has threatened to arrest us if we attempt to talk to Muslims and give them literature in the public, taxpayer-paid areas of the festival grounds.

Please pray for Rabbi Greg and his team.

I would post various articles that showed the coming persecution in America and archive them for future reference. Unfortunately, my archive disappeared when the main source of these articles changed their name and website to ONE NEWS NOW, and I lost all the links.

I have noticed, however, that more and more articles of Christian persecution are appearing in many sources, so I am reviving this column again as an archive of the liberties we are losing as Christians in America. If you spot a ”Lost Liberties” article, please send it to me.

 Court Bans Bible from Kindergarten Show-and-Tell

At the first convention of the National Religious Broadcasters since the November election, NRB president Frank Wright said, “The proclamation of the gospel is now opposed at every quarter. In the political arena, in the cultural context, in forces of the regulatory arena and the legislative environment — all these forces today seem to be arrayed against the gospel.”

But Dr. Wright said the NRB board has issued a declaration pledging to “obey the command of Christ to preach the gospel, even if human governments and institutions attempt to oppose, constrain, or prohibit it.” Read the rest here from OneNewsNow.