A 100-foot worship zone that switches on without warning

What the Act actually forbids

Sens. Ted Cruz and Elissa Slotkin, with Reps. Brad Knott and Tom Suozzi, introduced the Right to Worship Act the week of August 6, 2026. Read past the buffer-zone label and the bill is not what its critics and its own press describe. It does not exclude speakers from a circle of pavement. It restricts activity that "knowingly disrupts or impedes access to scheduled religious services within 100 feet of the entrance to a house of worship during that time," and it defines the banned conduct by its effect rather than by the speaker's message.¹ The sponsors are explicit that the rule "would not bar people from 'freely speaking on any subject'" inside the zone and targets "conduct rather than the content of protesters' speech."⁴ The Anti-Defamation League, which helped draft the model, describes the same conduct-based core: a ban on "knowingly disrupting religious services or impeding congregants from attending services within 100 feet of a house of worship during a defined period."⁵

The Supreme Court's speech cases split buffer rules into two kinds. One kind draws a line and forbids anyone to cross it to speak, whatever they do once inside. The other kind forbids a described act, such as knowingly obstructing a doorway, and leaves peaceful speech alone. The scienter requirement here, the word "knowingly," means the rule reaches only a person who acts aware they are disrupting a service. On its face this Act is the second kind.

The Act sits with Hill, not with McCullen. A writer who insisted this bill "cannot survive McCullen" would be answering a statute the sponsors did not write. The real problem lies a step in, in the words the Act uses to describe the act it forbids.

The words that carry the ban are the undefined ones

Two doctrines govern a speech rule written in loose terms. A law is void for vagueness when it fails to tell an ordinary person what it forbids, or hands enforcers so much discretion that they decide case by case who is punished. A law is overbroad when, whatever its valid core, it also reaches a substantial amount of protected speech. A court may then strike it on its face rather than wait for each chilled speaker to sue one at a time. Both faults trace to the same place in this bill: the verbs.

The prohibited conduct is activity that "meaningfully interferes with the ability of people to participate in the scheduled religious service, to the extent that the conduct causes a substantial interruption to the service's normal operation," or that "unreasonably hinders or deters a person from entering a house of worship, or threatens or intimidates a person, in a manner that prevents participation at a scheduled religious service."¹ Each qualifier is a judgment left to whoever enforces the rule: "meaningfully," "substantial," "unreasonably," "deters." A loud hymn parody sixty feet from the door interferes with a service; whether it does so "meaningfully" and "substantially" is the exact question the words decline to answer. "Deters" reaches further, since a person deterred from entering may have done nothing more than glimpse a sign they found offensive. The Act preserves the right to speak inside the zone,⁴ but a right a speaker can exercise only by guessing where "meaningful" interference begins is a right exercised timidly.

That unsettled point is itself part of the vagueness. A speaker on the sidewalk cannot tell whether the safe assumption is a $2,500 fine or a criminal record. A rule that leaves the citizen unsure not only what is forbidden but whether the penalty is civil or criminal has given the notice problem its sharpest form.

Twice the zone of the law it copies

A content-neutral speech rule is one that turns on where or how someone speaks, not on what they say. The Act qualifies, since it targets disruption whatever the protester's message.⁴ But content-neutrality only opens the analysis. Under McCullen a content-neutral rule must also be narrowly tailored, which means it may not "burden substantially more speech than is necessary to further the government's legitimate interests."² The interest here is real, and this paper grants it in full: a congregation should be able to worship without being blocked or menaced at its door. The question left is fit.

Two features stretch the fit. The first is distance. The bill echoes New York's buffer statute, signed in May 2026, which draws its protected area at 50 feet.⁸ The federal bill applies the same kind of conduct rule at 100 feet, twice the radius the state that wrote the model thought sufficient.¹ Nothing in the sponsors' account explains why the disruption they describe stops being reachable at 50 feet and needs the second fifty. The second feature is notice. The zone is live only during "scheduled religious services," and houses of worship need not publish those schedules.¹ A speaker on a public sidewalk has no posted time to consult, so the cautious course is silence whenever a service might be underway.

That chilling of protected speech is what a critic of the New York law already named. The NYCLU, which opposed the state statute, granted that it "does not establish uniform, demonstration-free buffer zones" and still warned that it "could make people censor themselves."³ Double the radius and keep the clock private, and that self-censorship only widens.

McCullen did more than strike a buffer. It named the tools that burden less speech: an existing obstruction statute, a FACE-style access law, targeted injunctions, and police dispersal orders. Massachusetts had tried none of them first.² Each maps onto this bill. Tie the ban to obstruction of entry rather than to "meaningful interference," hold the radius to the 50 feet New York chose, and ask a congregation to post the service windows it wants protected. The same worshippers keep the same protection, and a protester keeps a defined space in which to speak.

The tool McCullen asked Massachusetts to try first

The sponsors' strongest case is that this Act is exactly the instrument the Court told states to reach for. In McCullen the Justices faulted Massachusetts for never using the obstruction statute, FACE-style law, injunctions, and dispersal orders it already held before it resorted to a flat buffer.² The Right to Worship Act is that narrower instrument, written for houses of worship. It reaches only a person who knowingly disrupts a service or knowingly hinders, threatens, or intimidates a worshipper, and it leaves a leafleter who blocks no one untouched. Scienter, the requirement that the actor know what they are doing, is what keeps peaceful presence lawful. Sen. Cruz frames the bill as securing the free exercise of faith against "organized acts of hate meant to disrupt."¹ Rep. Suozzi says worship should not demand "particular courage" at the door.⁷ The ADL, which helped draft the model, calls the bill a protection of "the right to religious worship and the right to protected speech" at once.⁵ The sponsors also have precedent. In Hill v. Colorado the Court upheld, six to three, a materially similar conduct rule barring a knowing approach within eight feet of a person, without consent, to leaflet or counsel, anywhere within 100 feet of a clinic.⁶

The steelman is right about the structure, and that is why this paper does not argue the Act cannot survive McCullen. But narrow tailoring does not stop at structure. It asks whether the words burden more speech than the interest needs, and McCullen was unanimous only in its result: four Justices would have struck the buffer as content-based, so the tailoring holding is the Court's, not a consensus the Act can bank on.² "Meaningfully interferes" and "unreasonably hinders or deters" are not the obstruction standard McCullen pointed to, which reaches one who "knowingly obstructs, detains, hinders, impedes or blocks another person's entry."² The Act's terms reach expression that unsettles without blocking, and scienter narrows who is liable without defining what interference is: a protester can knowingly chant and still not know whether the chant crosses the line. And Hill is the sponsors' best authority and their most exposed one. Petitions from Paul Clement and Erin Murphy argue that intervening precedent has "all but interred" it, and Justice Thomas has called it "an aberration."⁹ A rule that leans on Hill leans on the precedent likeliest to fall.