Justice Department officials hold a press conference outlining the federal government’s FACE Act case stemming from a pro-Palestinian protest outside Congregation Ohr Torah in West Orange, New Jersey.A Clinton-appointed federal judge has thrown out the Trump Justice Department’s landmark lawsuit accusing pro-Palestinian demonstrators of violating the 1994 FACE Act during a violent protest outside a New Jersey synagogue, and she did it by lecturing the government about the First Amendment rights of the mob.U.S. District Judge Katharine S. Hayden, appointed by Bill Clinton in 1997 and on senior status since 2010, granted motions to dismiss on September 30 in United States v. Party for Socialism and Liberation New Jersey. The order, reported Friday, wiped out the sole FACE Act claim against the Party for Socialism and Liberation New Jersey, American Muslims for Palestine New Jersey, Tova Fry (also known as Terry Kay), Altaf Sharif, Matt Dragon, and Eric Camins.The dismissal is without prejudice. Hayden gave the Justice Department 30 days to file an amended complaint.According to Reuters, Hayden ruled that the government’s complaint “did not adequately plead violations of the statute.”The case was the first time the Trump Justice Department used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to allege interference with religious worship, Civil Rights Division chief Harmeet Dhillon said when the suit was filed.The FACE Act is the same Clinton-era law the Biden regime used for years to hunt pro-life Christians who prayed and sang hymns outside abortion clinics.The Gateway Pundit has reported extensively on those prosecutions, including the conviction of four pro-life advocates, Eva Edl, Eva Zastrow, James Zastrow, and Paul Place, after a peaceful protest at a Tennessee abortion facility.This time, the law was aimed at a synagogue.The Justice Department sued on September 29, 2025, over a November 13, 2024 protest outside Congregation Ohr Torah, an Orthodox synagogue in West Orange, New Jersey.The event was billed by organizers as a spiritual service and a real estate fair promoting property in Israeli settlements in the West Bank.Today, @CivilRights filed a FACE Act lawsuit against violent groups that intimidated and disrupted Jewish worshippers at their synagogue.Attacks on houses of worship are illegal, and @TheJusticeDept will not tolerate interference with Americans’ First Amendment rights. pic.twitter.com/1TyiHHwlUA— AAGHarmeetDhillon (@AAGDhillon) September 29, 2025The DOJ said the demonstration escalated into violence, with demonstrators physically assaulting worshippers, chanting, and blasting vuvuzelas to disrupt the gathering. The complaint also described a religious ceremony honoring a deceased rabbi.Then-Attorney General Pamela Bondi was blunt when the case was filed.“No American should be harassed, targeted, or discriminated against for peacefully practicing their religion,” Bondi said, according to the Justice Department.“Today’s lawsuit underscores this Department of Justice’s commitment to defending Jewish Americans — and all Americans of faith — from those who would threaten their right to worship.”Dhillon was just as direct. “This Justice Department will vigorously enforce the right of every American to worship in peace and without fear,” she said. “Those who target houses of worship and violate our federal laws protecting people of faith are on notice that they will face the consequences.”The Gateway Pundit reported at the time that Dhillon described a scene the Biden DOJ never seemed interested in: about 50 protesters assembled without a permit, defendants Altaf Sharif and a Jane Doe blew vuvuzelas within inches of a Jewish worshipper’s ears, Sharif charged a worshipper, and, after another worshipper intervened with pepper spray, Eric Camins pointed and shouted “the Jew is here,” prompting Sharif to put a worshipper in a chokehold lasting more than 20 seconds.Even after police ordered the crowd off synagogue grounds, Dhillon said, protesters kept shouting “You can’t hide” and “You’re next.”Hayden was not impressed with the pleading.According to the New York Daily News, the judge wrote that a “threat of force” must be “a constitutionally unprotected true threat: a serious expression, assessed in context, of an intent to commit unlawful violence against a particular person or group.” Political hyperbole, she said, “does not qualify.”She warned that treating the government’s central allegations as a FACE Act violation “would mean every push, shove, brawl or forceful conduct occurring during a protest like the one alleged here automatically becomes a FACE Act violation.”Then she added the line that will land with Jewish congregants: “It would demonize protestors who exercise their own First Amendment rights as being part of a mob, which this complaint does.”The Jewish News Syndicate reported that Hayden also wrote that “getting into a scuffle during a protest, a scuffle that took place somewhere on the grounds of the place of worship, definitely away from its entrance, does not mean that person’s conduct falls under FACE Act interdiction.”She suggested the facts could just as easily support an inference that two men the DOJ identified as victims interfered with a protester’s rights.The same statute Biden’s DOJ stretched to prosecute grandmothers with hymnals was, in this Clinton judge’s courtroom, too harsh for a protest the government says included a chokehold, horns blasted in worshippers’ ears, and threats of “You’re next” outside a synagogue.The post Clinton Judge Tosses Trump DOJ Lawsuit Accusing Pro-Palestinian Mob of Targeting New Jersey Synagogue Under the FACE Act — Same Law Biden Used to Jail Pro-Life Grandmas appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.