The TV show Arrested Development satirized antiwar protests in the George W. Bush administration when military personnel bused limousine-liberal Lindsay Bluth to a caged "free speech zone" to chant slogans on an empty road far from the base.

An Arizona city took a page from the cult sitcom when a Christian resident sought to evangelize at a two-week festival, but it went further by allegedly threatening to arrest him if he didn't go to its "free expression zone" outside the festival to shout the gospel.

David Hoffman sued the city of Tucson and two police officers for violating the First Amendment and the Arizona constitution by flatly prohibiting "religious" speech and "issue-based leafleting" at the Winterhaven Festival of Lights, which receives a city permit but takes place on "free and open" public streets, the lawsuit says.

The city's policy also violates Hoffman's 14th Amendment due process rights because it grants "unfettered discretion to private citizen permittees to make decisions about what content is allowed on public streets and ways," giving public officials "undue opportunity to enforce the policy in an ad hoc, arbitrary, and discriminatory manner," Hoffman claims.

The city didn't respond to First Liberty Institute's Dec. 16 warning letter on behalf of Hoffman, the religious liberty law firm said, prompting the lawsuit to ensure Hoffman can evangelize at this year's festival, obtain nominal damages to recognize last year's constitutional violations and compel the city to pay his attorney's fees.

“Censoring a Christian message during a public Christmas event is malicious, unconstitutional, and absurd,” senior counsel Nate Kellum said. "The government cannot ban only religious messages." 

Co-counsel Matt Scorcio at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher said Tucson cannot limit free speech to "remote, isolated areas where no one can hear or see a message."

First Liberty told Just the News it waited so long to sue after the warning letter because it works with law firms "that provide their work pro bono. Often, these cases just take time." Holtzman Vogel is also co-counsel with Gibson Dunn.

A Tucson public information officer referred Just the News to a different PIO, who did not respond to a query. The police department did not respond either.

The lawsuit doesn't mention a 2021 Supreme Court precedent involving nearly identical allegations by an evangelist against a public college, which confirmed that seeking nominal damages to redress non-economic harm – the same sought by Hoffman – was enough to sustain a lawsuit after the college dropped its evangelism ban mid-litigation.

It refers to other precedents by SCOTUS, the Arizona Supreme Court and the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees Arizona. They include protections for school employees' on-field prayer after football games, evangelism at permit holders' events in public parks and Christian businesses against compelled participation in same-sex weddings.

The lawsuit quotes the Kennedy precedent for the high school football coach's prayer, which says it's "no accident" that the First Amendment "doubly protects religious speech" by way of its free exercise and free speech clauses.

The 'permit thing' overrides First Amendment rights

Festival-goers like Hoffman would struggle to determine what they're allowed to do based on policies posted on the festival website, which describes its displays as "Christmas lights," and signs at the event itself.

The website home page has carried a "Freedom of Speech" policy since the 2022 celebration, which says those wishing to use the festival for "advocacy for social, cultural, political, religious or other ideological purposes [...] shall be treated the same as other individuals and groups" but must not "be stationary" or use displays.

But its FAQ page includes a solicitation policy that flatly prohibits "political and religious messaging, proselytizing" and "pamphlet distribution," emphasizing the event is "private" and takes place "in a residential neighborhood community." Just the News couldn't find an archive of it before Dec. 11, 2025, two days before the festival started.

A sign depicted in the lawsuit, with the festival logo, also prohibits "political, religious, or commercial materials or messaging" or "flyers," directing visitors who want to engage in such activity to a free expression zone "near" one entrance. 

The zone sign, also depicted in the lawsuit, may be the most confusing. It insists enforcement is not based on the "content of any message" while explicitly prohibiting religious and political solicitation.

First Liberty told Just the News the festival home page statement "pre-dates the 2025 festival," the first year Tucson required a permit and police "enforced the prohibition against religious speech," and it contradicts the FAQs, the written policy an officer gave Hoffman, the entrance signs and everything he was "repeatedly told" by officers and festival staff.

"The public streets are the United States’ oldest and most traditional public forum" and religious evangelism is protected, yet officers threatened to arrest Hoffman across "multiple nights" for verbally sharing his faith, whether speaking "conversationally" with a person, answering their question about how to be saved or preaching "while I walk out," the lawsuit says.

Defendant Officer William Leonard said "volume" wasn't the problem but rather "preaching" and "sermonizing" in and of themselves, shooting down every hypothetical Hoffman posed, and four officers escorted him out of the festival, Hoffman alleges.

An unnamed festival organizer "joined the conversation" when another group of officers confronted Hoffman, claiming "no political, no religious" conversations were allowed under city policy and that festival-goers had already been removed for such, the lawsuit says. The city manager's office "aggressively gave that information to us," the organizer said.

Defendant Officer Matt Alexander confirmed that Hoffman using his voice alone for proselytizing would get him arrested "if you don't leave" when festival organizers asked him to, citing the "permit thing" – the fact that the city gives official approval to the event, the suit says.

Both officers confirmed the total ban on Christian leaflets at the behest of the organizers, but Alexander declined to show Hoffman the permit when he asked, Hoffman alleges.

The Free Expression Zone, which physically separates speakers from passers-by, requires Hoffman to antagonize festival-goers because he has to "shout and raise his voice" over nearby traffic, and it "demeans" his evangelism group "in front of the same people they are trying to reach," according to the suit.