First Liberty Institute's lawsuit filed on behalf of David Hoffman argues that the city violated his First Amendment rights during last year's Winterhaven Festival of Lights (pictured above).
Hoffman has shared his Christian faith in Tucson for more than a decade through street evangelism, gospel conversations and distributing religious literature at public gatherings. It's quite possible that at least some police knew Hoffman personally, had dealt with him previously or had received earlier complaints about his evangelism, though none of that is established by available reporting.
He had reportedly attended the Winterhaven Festival of Lights, an event that originated in 1949, for nearly a decade before the Dec. 13, 2025, incident, when Tucson police told him and his friends to stop their religious outreach or face arrest, directing them to a barricaded "speech zone" near a busy street outside the festival boundaries.
Garrett Bell, associate counsel at First Liberty Institute, says officers told Hoffman he could not even answer questions about salvation inside the festival grounds.
"The officers told him … that he had to have that conversation outside of the event," Bell relays.
The festival is described as "an inclusive celebration for everyone, regardless of religious background." A policy noted at the bottom of the event's homepage welcomes everyone's freedom of expression as long as they are moving and not impeding traffic.
Bell says that policy, which predates the 2025 incident, has since been changed to require a permit. Last year, commercial vendors, live music and party bikes were permitted throughout the public streets, but city officials enforced the new policy strictly banning religious and political messaging.
"As part of that permit, city officers were enforcing the no religious materials, no religious messaging rule," Bell says, adding, "It's easy to see that this is wrong."
Religious outreach had taken place at Winterhaven before the 2025 incident. Online, Tucson residents have discussed street preachers at the festival in previous years, describing evangelists distributing religious literature and a preacher dressed as Santa who spoke about Jesus.
According to Just the News, an unnamed festival organizer told Hoffman that festivalgoers had previously been removed for prohibited political or religious messaging, but available reporting does not confirm that anyone else was threatened with arrest before 2025.
Bell emphasizes that public sidewalks belong to everyone.
"A public street festival is just that — it's a public space where citizens can visit and walk around and converse with each other about different ideas," he insists. "The government cannot target religious ones."
He believes "no American should want government to be able to dictate what messages are okay and which ones are out of bounds" and says the lawsuit seeks an injunction allowing Hoffman to return and share his faith at future festivals.
"I think where this is particularly relevant to, honestly, any American citizen, no matter what you believe," Bell says.
Andy Squire, the city's public information officers, told AFN the city does not comment on pending litigation.
