Prosecutors in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, filed charges against a pro-life family, the Knotts, for explaining their pro-life views outside an abortion business.
They kept up the case, which essentially attacked the family members for their words, for months.
Then when the trial was scheduled, they “folded” and gave up the “wrongful criminal charges entirely.”
Now, on behalf of the family, the American Center for Law and Justice is fighting back with a lawsuit against the city over its First Amendment violations.
“The arrest, prosecution, and ongoing threat of future enforcement have already achieved the government’s apparent goal: silencing disfavored speech,” the legal team explained about the prosecution. “This case exemplifies why the ACLJ exists: to defend the constitutional rights of Americans against government overreach and discrimination. We refuse to allow local officials to use vague ordinances as weapons against unpopular speech, and we will not stand by while religious and pro-life voices are silenced through selective enforcement.”
The organization pointed out, “The First Amendment doesn’t guarantee freedom from annoyance or inconvenience – it guarantees freedom of speech, especially for unpopular viewpoints that challenge the status quo. When government officials start deciding which messages deserve protection based on their own preferences, we’re all at risk.”
Being sought in the legal filing is a declaration that the ordinance manipulated by the city to charge the family is unconstitutional, an injunction ending its use, compensation for the constitutional infringements, return of the family’s megaphone that police confiscated and more.
“This case is part of a larger assault on religious freedom and pro-life speech across America. From college campuses to city sidewalks, government officials are increasingly willing to silence religious viewpoints while protecting secular ones,” the ACLJ explained. “The Supreme Court of the United States has repeatedly affirmed that the First Amendment does not permit the government to make such distinctions. In Reed v. Town of Gilbert, the Court emphasized that content-based restrictions on speech are presumptively unconstitutional. In Rosenberger v. University of Virginia, the Supreme Court held that viewpoint discrimination is an ‘egregious form of content discrimination.’”
The ACLJ explained this case:
What happened to the Knotts family in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, represents a textbook case of viewpoint discrimination – an egregious violation of the First Amendment. The shocking details of their treatment reveal a deliberate pattern of government censorship based solely on the content of their pro-life message.
On December 28, 2024, the Knotts traveled to the Northeast Ohio Women’s Center, an abortion clinic, to peacefully exercise their First Amendment rights, engaging in sidewalk evangelism and pro-life advocacy. What happened next exposed a troubling pattern of government officials weaponizing local ordinances to silence religious and pro-life speech.
Zack used a battery-powered megaphone – quieter than ambient traffic noise – to share his life-affirming message from a public sidewalk. Meanwhile, abortion clinic escorts actively worked to drown out his speech using their own sound devices, including whistles and kazoos, while making threats against the couple.
One escort even told Zack to “suck-start a shotgun.” During a previous encounter, Zack had told escorts how his mother-in-law had considered an abortion while pregnant with his now wife, and if she had gone through with it, his wife “should be dead.” An escort interrupted, stating, “We can fix that.”
Despite this harassment and the escorts’ use of the same types of sound devices prohibited by the city’s noise ordinance, only Zack was arrested and cited.
However, among the multitude of problems is that the “complaint” that triggered Zack’s arrest mentioned only the pro-life speech, not the abortion kazoos and whistles and noise from the escorts.
Further the arresting officers never witnessed Zack using a megaphone, and they took a statement only from “Officer Oldham,” who actually was working for the abortion business in security at the time, an “obvious conflict of interest.”
And the threats made by the escorts never were prosecuted.
The fault rests with the city’s ordinance, the report said, as it “prohibits amplified sound that might cause ‘inconvenience or annoyance to persons of ordinary sensibilities.’”
That’s “vague language that invites arbitrary enforcement,” the ACLJ said.
Then there are the law’s exemptions, which are biased. For example, it exempts amplified sound from “educational organizations and charitable organizations.”
The lawsuit, on behalf of Zachary and Lindsey Knotts in U.S. district court in Ohio, charges it is unconstitutional for creating a two-tiered system of speech rights, is so vague as to leave in doubt its validity, and leaves total discretion to cops deciding what they don’t like.
Also, it establishes a discrimination against certain viewpoints.
