Winterhaven Festival of Lights — Site of Disputed Speech Restrictions
A Tucson evangelist who says police threatened to arrest him for talking about Jesus at a neighborhood Christmas light festival has filed a federal lawsuit against the city, arguing officers unconstitutionally banned him from religious speech on public streets. David Hoffman claims he was excluded from the Winterhaven Festival of Lights multiple times in 2025 after nearly a decade of evangelizing there without incident.
Hoffman’s lawsuit, Hoffman v. City of Tucson et al., was filed October 2 in the U.S. District Court for the District of Arizona, according to The Arizona Republic. The suit names the City of Tucson along with police officers Matt Alexander and William Leonard, according to PacerMonitor. Hoffman says he attended and evangelized at the festival for almost a decade without issue before officers began turning him away in 2025…