In Hubersberger v. State of Arizona, (AZ App., Feb. 9, 2026), an Arizona state appeals court, rejecting a free exercise defense, refused to dismiss complaints charging four protesters with criminal trespass. According to the court:
... Appellants, motivated by their sincerely held religious beliefs, participated in a protest against Raytheon because of its role as a weapons supplier to Israel and the bombings occurring in Gaza. Appellants’ demonstration occurred on private property, and their stated purpose was to disrupt Raytheon’s daily operations by blocking Raytheon workers from entering the facility....
Appellants moved to dismiss the complaints against them pursuant to FERA [Arizona's Free Exercise of Religion Act], arguing that because their protest was motivated by their religious faith, their arrest and prosecution substantially burdened their free exercise of religion....
Appellants do not dispute on appeal that the government had a compelling interest to protect the peace and Raytheon’s private property rights. We therefore only address the second prong of the FERA analysis: whether the arrest and prosecution of Appellants was the least restrictive means in which the government could have furthered its interests in this case....
We, like the superior court, find nothing on the record to indicate that Appellants would have left Raytheon’s private property without state intervention....
Appellants next assert ... that the arrest alone was sufficient to further the government’s interest, therefore their continued prosecution necessarily does not meet the least restrictive means test....
We also conclude that analyzing whether the prosecutor should or should not bring charges “would plunge courts far too deep into the business of reviewing the most basic exercises of prosecutorial discretion.”...
