A group of Christian street preachers are suing the city of Chicago, claiming Chicago Police wrongly detained or arrested them under the guise of an ordinance regulating amplified noise, as part of an alleged unwritten discriminatory policy hostile to religious speakers.
Two separate lawsuits have been lodged against the city and various Chicago Police officers.
The first was filed in December 2024 by Moody Bible Institute student Ethan Acevedo, of Chicago.
It was followed in March by a separate lawsuit filed by attorneys for traveling street preacher Brett Raio, of Maine; Chicago street evangelist Perez Ndi; and street preacher Reetik Dhamala, of Wheaton. Those three men renewed their claims against the city and four Chicago Police officers in an amended complaint filed April 17.
“Chicago Police appear to have adopted an unwritten, unlawful, and unconstitutional policy of targeting and arresting religious speakers who use amplification, regardless of whether they actually violate any noise ordinance,” said attorney Robin Rubrecht, an attorney with the Chicago firm of Mauck & Baker, which is representing Acevedo. “Whether through ignorance or by intent, this is unacceptable and must stop.”
Raio, Ndi and Dhamala are being represented by attorneys with the American Center for Law & Justice, of Washington, D.C.
"Chicago law only requires permits for amplification that exceeds conversational levels at 100 feet away, yet police are arresting preachers who use any amplification at all. They are not taking any measures to determine if the speech actually violates the noise ordinance; they are just pulling up in their squad cars and immediately arresting the preachers," the ACLJ said in a statement issued at the time the suit was filed.
"This has all the markings of unconstitutional targeting of preachers, displaying an unlawful anti-Christian animus," the ACLJ said.
According to the lawsuits, all of the allegedly wrongly detained Christian street preachers were standing on public sidewalks in Chicago when they were engaged by police.
According to Acevedo's lawsuit, he was part of a group speaking on a religious basis against abortion while near a Planned Parenthood clinic at 1200 N. La Salle on March 30, 2024.
According to the other lawsuit, Raio and Ndi were accosted, handcuffed and cited by Chicago Police while proselytizing at the intersection of East Madison Street and North Michigan Avenue near Millenium Park on Dec. 21, 2024. Ndi and Dhamala were later arrested at the same location and detained for seven hours by Chicago Police on Feb. 24, 2025.
According to the complaints, all were arrested, detained or cited by police claiming authority under a Chicago city ordinance which the officers allegedly said prohibited speaking using amplification without permits on public streets.
However, according to the complaints, the purported ordinance doesn't prohibit the use of exterior amplification. Rather, the plaintiffs assert the ordinance only requires permits for "excessively loud amplification that is louder than an average conversational level at a distance of a hundred feet."
According to Acevedo's complaint, he was arrested by a Chicago Police officer as he was reading the ordinance into a microphone, which included the language in the ordinance they said demonstrated amplification was not fobidden.
In the complaints from the other preachers, they said police either cuffed them or arrested and held them, despite plaintiffs' pleas that officers were misinterpreting the ordinance and officers' refusal to take decibel readings that allegedly would have shown the sound amplification was well within the allowable range.
The lawsuit noted the arrests of Ndi and Dhamala also came just one day after the initial charges against Raio were dismissed by a prosecutor, allegedly immediately after viewing video of the officers' interaction with Raio in December.
Further, the lawsuit alleges police have yet to return the speaker and other equipment officers seized when arresting Ndi and Dhamala in February.
The allegations in the two lawsuits confirm "that this unwritten policy appears to be the Chicago Police Department’s way of dealing with the religious rights of people in the Windy City," Rubrecht said.
"Analysts have shown that repeated police misconduct cost Chicago taxpayers almost $150 million over a four-year period. It’s no wonder that Chicago was named the ‘most corrupt city in America’ several years in a row, according to a University of Illinois at Chicago report. It’s time to hold the City of Chicago accountable for abusing the religious rights of those who wish to share their sincerely held beliefs.”
The lawsuits seek court orders blocking the city from wrongly enforcing the sound amplification ordinance to allegedly target street evangelists near Millenium Park or the Planned Parenthood facility at 1200 N. LaSalle.
They also seek unspecified compensatory damages for alleged violations of their First Amendment rights and other constitutional rights.