Tucson police threatened a Christian man with arrest for talking about Jesus at a public Christmas festival.
When the city ignored First Liberty's warning letter, that man sued and named the officers personally.
One officer said the gospel was not too loud – and then explained why it still had to go.
Tucson Claimed a City Permit Gave Organizers the Right to Ban Christian Religious Expression
David Hoffman visited Tucson's Winterhaven Festival of Lights – an annual event held on free, open public streets in a residential neighborhood – to share his faith with anyone willing to listen.
He was walking through the crowd, speaking quietly with people who stopped to talk, handing out literature, answering questions about faith – no megaphone, no disruption, nothing that bothered anyone.
That's when Tucson police moved in.
Officer Matt Alexander told Hoffman directly: using his voice alone to proselytize would get him arrested if festival organizers asked him to leave.
Alexander called it "the permit thing" – the city's decision to issue a permit to the festival meant organizers now had the authority to ban the gospel on public streets.
Officer William Leonard was even more direct: volume was never the problem.
The officers had banned preaching itself – it made no difference how quietly Hoffman spoke or whether a single person had complained.
Four officers escorted Hoffman out of the festival.
The city's policy doesn't just target loud or disruptive speech – it singles out religious speech for total elimination while leaving every other conversation untouched.
Festival signs directed anyone who wanted to discuss religion to a "free expression zone" near one entrance – a barricaded cage set back from the crowd, where speakers had to shout over traffic noise just to be heard.
One festival organizer who joined the confrontation told officers the city manager's office had personally given them this authority.
First Liberty Institute – the nation's largest religious liberty law firm – sent the city a demand letter on December 16, 2025.
Tucson ignored it, so now the city is getting sued – along with Officers Alexander and Leonard personally.
"Censoring a Christian message during a public Christmas event is malicious, unconstitutional, and absurd," said First Liberty senior counsel Nate Kellum. "The government cannot ban only religious messages."
https://twitter.com/firstliberty_/status/2107850302044979549
Every First Amendment Case Against These Religious Freedom Bans Has Ended the Same Way
Courts have ruled on this exact pattern for years, and cities that try it lose.
In Dearborn, Michigan, city officials restricted a Christian evangelist to a single designated location while leaving the sidewalks open for everyone else – the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled it a First Amendment violation and opened the city and its police chief to liability for damages.
In Chicago, a pastor was arrested at a public street festival for preaching the gospel without a permit – a federal judge allowed his civil rights lawsuit to proceed, affirming First Amendment protection for preaching on public streets without government permission.
In St. Louis, missionaries were threatened with removal at a public park festival, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction calling the city's ban unconstitutional.
The pattern in every one of these cases is the same: a city issues a permit to a private event, the organizers use that permit as a license to control all speech on public property, and a Christian gets thrown out for the content of what he said.
Courts have rejected this model every single time, and Tucson's version is worse.
The city's own policy banned "political, religious, or commercial materials or messaging" while its website claimed the festival treated all speech equally – a contradiction that handed private organizers total control over what Americans could say on public streets, with no rules, no limits, and nobody accountable for the decision.
That's not a permit – that's government-outsourced censorship.
Tucson had ten months after that demand letter to settle this quietly – and said nothing.
Now they are going to get the same First Amendment education Dearborn got, Chicago got, and St. Louis got – paid for by the taxpayers of Tucson.
Sources:
- Greg Piper, "City sued for criminalizing evangelism at 'public Christmas event,' forcing it into offsite 'zone,'" Just the News, October 15, 2026.
- First Liberty Institute, "City of Tucson Bans Religious Speech at Holiday Festival," firstliberty.org, December 17, 2025.
- First Liberty Institute, "David Hoffman Case Page," firstliberty.org, 2025–2026.
- "Court Upholds Evangelist's Right to Pass Tracts to Muslims," Christian Post, 2011.
- "Federal Court Allows Religious Liberty Case to Go Forward Against the City of Chicago," The Aquila Report, 2009.
