Lawyer Who Fought Biden’s FACE Act Weaponization Urges GOP To ‘Keep Charging Forward’ On Repeal

A lawyer who defended many of the peaceful pro-life protesters targeted by the Biden administration praised the House Judiciary Committee for voting to repeal the decades-old statute used to put them behind bars. 

Steve Crampton, a lawyer with the Thomas More Society, told The Daily Wire that it was “very encouraging” that the Judiciary Committee passed a bill on Tuesday from Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) to repeal the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. The FACE Act, first passed in 1994, is a law that makes obstructing access to an abortion facility a federal crime and ostensibly provides the same protections for churches and pregnancy centers.  

In reality, Crampton noted, the law has been used to go after peaceful pro-life demonstrators, while attacks on churches and crisis pregnancy centers are often ignored. Data obtained by Roy show that 97% of all FACE Act prosecutions since 1994 have been against pro-lifers.

“You have ample law under state law and elsewhere to prosecute truly violent undertakings,” Crampton told The Daily Wire. “All the FACE Act adds is the physical obstruction component, which is targeted at peaceful civil disobedience acts that have historically been really cherished and celebrated in our country, rather than singled out for harsh federal prosecutions.”

Throughout multiple federal trials, Crampton defended peaceful pro-life protesters, such as Paul Vaughn in Tennessee and Lauren Handy in Washington, D.C., who were convicted under both FACE and conspiracy against rights charges during the Biden administration. Both faced over a decade in prison. Handy was sentenced to over four years in prison, while Vaughn was sentenced to home detention. 

In January, President Donald Trump pardoned the pro-life protesters, freeing Handy and others from federal prison. Trump’s Justice Department also issued a memo saying FACE would only be prosecuted in cases of extreme violence. 

Crampton said he was disappointed to see California Republican Rep. Tom McClintock voice opposition to repealing FACE during Tuesday’s hearing, as he argued that the law was neutral but abused by the Biden administration. Crampton said the law was inherently content-based, noting that you could only be charged under FACE if your intent was to prevent abortion and not just obstruction in general. He also said that the bias of the law “screams through the statistics” of the prosecutions. 

Vaughn, a Christian father of 11 whose Tennessee home was raided by armed FBI agents, told The Daily Wire he was happy to see the repeal advance. 

“The reality is it’s never done anything other than provide a federal hammer to be used against the pro-life community,” he said. “There’s not a law that it covers, that is not already a state law, or is not an infraction that it covers, it’s not covered under a state law.”

Vaughn says he would also like to see reforms brought to the conspiracy against rights provision from the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act, which Biden’s Justice Department paired with FACE in their cases against the pro-lifer protesters. That meant that Vaughn and others — like 89-year-old communist concentration camp survivor Eva Edl — faced over 10 years in prison. 

Crampton agreed, noting that he would like to see the provision heavily revised to ensure First Amendment protections or even done away with altogether. He thinks that FACE should be dealt with first because state attorneys general still bring FACE prosecutions under the law even if the Trump administration is not active. 

FACE “remains a very, very powerful weapon in the hands of these left-wing attorneys general,” Crampton told The Daily Wire, adding that “protecting fundamental First Amendment rights ought to be of the highest priority in our national debate” and that pro-life advocates should “keep charging forward.” 

A full vote on the repeal has not yet been scheduled for the House, and the legislation would likely have an uphill battle in the Senate. Republican Senators such as Mike Lee of Utah and Josh Hawley of Missouri have been very outspoken about the weaponization of the FACE Act.