For years, Republicans and fair-minded people have expressed concern about the unequal application of the law in the area of First Amendment protections. For example, churches during the COVID-19 pandemic were famously restricted from meeting, but protests for the “Black Lives Matter” movement were allowed to go forward. Last week marked the courts stepping in to push back and uphold the First Amendment:

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, in a unanimous 3-0 decision, found that two anti-abortion groups had plausibly alleged that the D.C. government “discriminated on the basis of viewpoint in the selective enforcement of its defacement ordinance.”

The groups, the Frederick Douglass Foundation and Students for Life of America, sued the D.C. government in 2021 after local police arrested two protesters who wrote “Black Pre-Born Lives Matter” on a public sidewalk during an August 2020 demonstration.

The foundation claimed D.C. authorities abandoned enforcement of the anti-graffiti law during widespread protests in the city following the murder of George Floyd by police in Minneapolis. Yet that same summer, the group claimed, the restriction was “vigorously” enforced against them.

While Democrats wanted to fight over whether men can get pregnant in today’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, “A Post-Roe America: The Legal Consequences of the Dobbs Decision,” Republicans focused on the importance of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization and how it restores the democratic process.