Court temporarily blocks Phoenix ordinance threatening homeless ministry

A Christian Orthodox ministry in Phoenix regularly provides food for the homeless at a local public park. But the nonprofit says a new city ordinance aimed at keeping parks safe would criminally punish its efforts.

Last Wednesday, a federal judge agreed, granting St. Herman’s Table a temporary restraining order allowing it to serve meals to homeless people at the park for the next 14 days. The ruling highlights First Amendment questions that constitutional law experts say signal Phoenix officials are facing a losing battle.

“It means that we can continue to do the work that we want to do, that God is commanding us to do, without threat,” said Lance Brace, the ministry’s founder.

St. Herman’s Table, a ministry of Exaltation of the Holy Cross Orthodox Church, serves homeless people a buffet-style meal in a north Phoenix park once a week. The ministry also provides them with Bibles and small hygiene products, Brace said.

He founded the organization soon after he got baptized into the Orthodox Church in August 2025. He said the Holy Spirit compelled him to take care packages to the homeless, which then progressed to taking meals to the park with his son.

Soon, church members asked to help with the ministry. The group of volunteers eventually grew into a nonprofit organization that serves around 12 to 25 homeless people a week.

But in May, Phoenix passed an ordinance that Brace said hindered St. Herman’s work. The measure bars organizations from providing medical care and distributing food in city parks without a permit, and it bans needle exchange programs and other medical care involving needles. The city issues a total of two meal or medical permits per park each month. If ministries or nonprofit organizations operate without permits, they face misdemeanor charges.

The City Council passed the ordinance ostensibly to keep parks clean and needle-free. The parks had become increasingly dangerous, and groups that offered these services left behind trash such as used medical needles, ordinance proponents said.

But multiple organizations and activists pushed back, arguing that the ordinance punished everyone for the actions of a few.

Brace contended that St. Herman’s volunteers leave the park cleaner than they find it, and he said the group has never received complaints about crowd size, littering, or noise. He also said the permitting process burdens the organization as it requires St. Herman’s to complete an application months in advance and list which volunteers will be there.

Before the city passed its ordinance, Brace was a vocal opponent, he said, testifying at a community meeting and a City Council meeting. He also reached out to the city manager but said he did not hear back. He wished the city would have worked with the organizations “rather than just slapping a bunch of restrictions on us,” he told me.

St. Herman’s filed a lawsuit against the city on June 2, days before the ordinance was set to go into effect. It also asked the court for a temporary restraining order that would allow the ministry to continue its work until the court could further hear the case.

In its complaint, St. Herman’s alleges that the ordinance results in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination by allowing some secular events to occur without permits but not others. “If the city were truly committed to addressing park orderliness and cleanliness, it would not exempt birthday parties, weddings, and social gatherings from the ordinance,” the complaint alleges.

St. Herman’s also argued that the First Amendment protects its work, as the feeding ministry constitutes a free exercise of religion.

In last week’s ruling granting the stay, U.S. District Judge Krissa M. Lanham found the organization’s First Amendment claims were likely to prevail.

“Phoenix provides no evidence or meaningful argument explaining why a birthday party providing cake to twenty select two-year-olds is any less likely to strain park resources with noise or mess than a religiously-motivated gathering open to twenty members of the public,” Lanham said.

Lanham said that the government could have created a less restrictive ordinance that instead required permits based on an event’s size, trash levels, or noise levels. Her order will expire on June 24 and applies only to St. Herman’s Table and Brace.

In a statement to WORLD, a city spokeswoman emphasized the ruling’s temporary and narrow effect. Phoenix adopted its ordinance to “regulate and manage the growing competition in City parks between food distribution events and other, more traditional park uses, like children’s play, youth sports, adult recreation, and family outings,” said Ashley Patton, the city’s deputy communications director. The law makes no distinctions based on religion, the spokeswoman added.

Other organizations besides St. Herman’s have also expressed concern about the ordinance. On Monday, two more nonprofits filed a lawsuit against the city, alleging the First Amendment protects their right to do charitable work.

But Lanham’s ruling signals that St. Herman’s Table is likely to receive a favorable ruling in the next steps of the case, said Steven McFarland, a director at Christian Legal Society, which represents Brace. McFarland hopes the ruling will also allow the case to be settled at the preliminary injunction stage, rather than dragging on for years.

While the city’s desire for cleaning parks is important, it “just pales in comparison to our constitutional rights,” McFarland said. He emphasized that the city’s ordinance directly burdens Brace’s First Amendment–protected practice of religion, and that Lanham’s ruling indicates the direction the case is likely to go.

“A judge is going to be pretty loath to mess with elected officials governing public property,” McFarland said. “There’s got to be something really broken before a federal judge is going to actually say we met the burden of showing that the balance of hardships tips in favor of Lance.”

Phoenix will likely lose at every level if it appeals the ruling, said Brad Jacob, an associate dean at Regent University School of Law, arguing that the law clearly violates the Constitution since it does not equally apply to all. By limiting the permits to two a month, it likely doesn’t meet reasonable time and location restrictions, he said.

“It’s almost hard to imagine how mean-spirited this is that the city of Phoenix wants to prevent a Christian charity from providing food for homeless people,” Jacob said. “The Phoenix City Council ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

Brace said that, if the ordinance is later allowed to go into effect, it could keep some individuals from receiving needed resources. One disabled individual told Brace that the only complete meal he receives each week is from St. Herman’s Table, Brace said.

“It would have detrimental effects on our ministry and on our homeless family,” Brace said. “We wouldn’t be able to continue doing our ministry in the same way we have been.”