Pro-Life Mark Houck Brings $4.3 Million Lawsuit Against Biden for Targeting Him

While the Biden administration continues prosecuting pro-life Americans, Mark Houck is fighting back in court.

Pro-life group 40 Days for Life filed a lawsuit recently against the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for “[m]alicious/retaliatory prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest and related claims” committed against pro-life advocate and Catholic father of seven Mark Houck.

In 2022, Houck was indicted by the DOJ for two alleged violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act. Houck was eventually exonerated on the bogus charges Biden officials brought.

The lawsuit claims that these charges “were a result of a faulty and malicious investigation of Mr. Houck,” who the lawsuit further states “had been targeted for indictment without probable cause because of his beliefs, his public prayer and speech, and his position as a counselor associated with a crisis-pregnancy center.”

Houck initially filed a notice of claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act, naming six police officers who assisted in the home raid. The claim accuses the Biden DOJ of “malicious prosecution, retaliatory prosecution, abuse of process, false arrest, assault, and intentional infliction of emotional distress committed by federal employees and agents against Mr. Houck, Mrs. Houck, and their children.” Filed November 2023, the claim has now passed the required six-month notice period and is an active lawsuit as of late last month.

Houck’s lawsuit has the potential to send a strong message to law enforcement across the country that pro-life advocates’ constitutional rights must be protected and abuses of power will carry legal consequences.

Matt Britton, 40 Days for Life general counsel, says most lower court cases do not get appealed due to lack of resources, so they are generally not reported. “Based on those that are appealed, the reported cases indicate to me that trial courts are more willing than they have been in the past to side with ideology over law,” he said.

Because Houck’s new case sidestepped the lower courts, moving directly to the federal level, it drew widespread national media coverage. Against the odds of the feds’ 95 percent conviction rate and a jury trial in Philadelphia, Houck and his legal team were confident in a win. Houck turned down a plea deal as he awaited trial, an agreement that would have nullified his ability to sue, and would have put “all pro-life Americans … at risk,” Carney said. “He has a very strong [suit].”

Houck’s arrest portrayed an unprecedented level of aggression against 40 Days participants, Carney said.

“I haven’t found a current or former DOJ employee who has ever heard of someone’s home being raided after they offered to turn themselves in,” Carney said. “It’s absurd and if it can happen to him it can happen to any American.”

Previously, Carney said, “For two decades, 40 Days for Life worked closely with the great men and women at the FBI and DOJ to protect our volunteers and those who disagree with us in the public square. Our peaceful, law-abiding efforts never changed.”

He continued, “What changed? The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and the weaponization of the DOJ against pro-life Americans and Catholics skyrocketed. America doesn’t belong to the FBI, it belongs to law-abiding citizens no matter their religion or political affiliation. The bigotry and selective prosecution of our government cannot silence us to peacefully and legally share our beliefs in the public square.”

The lawsuit claims that the FBI “purposefully conducted a biased and corrupt investigation” against Houck, a frequent volunteer with the pro-life organization. “The actions of the FBI’s investigators were contrary to the Department of Justice’s … public policy that the FACE Act ‘is not about abortions,’” the lawsuit continues. “Yet below the surface, the investigators’ actions were fully in accord with extrajudicial statements of DOJ leadership that pro-life services are ‘fake’ and ‘predatory’ upon abortion rights.”

The DOJ’s accusations against Houck stemmed from an incident in 2021, when Houck and his then-12-year-old son were praying outside a Philadelphia abortion facility. As was later demonstrated in court, Planned Parenthood employee Bruce Love left his post to approach Houck, spewing “ridicule and profanity” at the child. Of note, Love had a history of being reprimanded by Planned Parenthood for violating the abortion company’s policy and “antagonizing” pro-life advocates. When Love refused to heed the pro-life father’s warnings to leave his son alone, Houck shoved him. According to the Thomas More Society, which represented Houck in court later, Love tried to initiate a private prosecution against Houck but failed to appear at his own hearing.

Although Houck had, through the Thomas More Society, previously agreed with the DOJ to appear voluntarily if there were federal charges against him, the FBI decided instead to raid his home with at least two dozen agents armed with guns and riot gear, arresting him in front of his wife and children in September 2022. The Thomas More Society called this show of excessive force “an effort to intimidate Mark and others who minister outside abortion clinics.” Noting that Houck’s wife and children “were directly downrange of the agents’ guns,” the 40 Days for Life lawsuit states, “In a shocking display of the political animus against the pro-life movement harbored at the highest levels of the Department of Justice, Mr. Houck was treated like a dangerous criminal. He was arrested at gunpoint in front of his wife and children.”

Houck’s trial began in January 2023 and lasted only a week. After less than an hour of deliberation, a jury returned a unanimous verdict of “not guilty.”

Biden appointee DOJ’s Kristen Clarke Celebrates Prison Time for Pro-Life Activists
Daily Signal ^ | May 17, 2024 | Mary Margaret Olohan
Posted on 5/17/2024, 1:08:28 PM by Red Badger

The Justice Department’s Kristen Clarke issued a statement this week celebrating news that seven pro-life activists would spend time in prison for attempting to stop abortions from taking place.

Clarke, who heads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and is responsible for enforcing the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, painted the pro-life activists as violent radicals in her remarks: “Violence has no place in our national discourse on reproductive health.”

The activists’ actions were nonviolent, and the DOJ’s release on the matter even notes that they “passively” resisted “their anticipated arrests.”

“Using force, threatening to use force or physically obstructing access to reproductive health care is unlawful,” she added, before referring to the 1993 murder of a Florida abortionist. “As we mark the 30th anniversary of the FACE Act, it’s important that we not lose sight of the history of violence against reproductive health care providers, including the murder of Dr. David Gunn in Florida—tragic and horrific events that led to passage of the law.”

The FACE Act is a 1994 law that supposedly protects both abortion clinics and pregnancy resource centers, but has been heavily enforced by President Joe Biden’s DOJ against pro-lifers since the June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade.

“The Justice Department will continue to protect both patients seeking reproductive health services and providers of those services,” the DOJ official concluded. “We will hold accountable those who seek to interfere with access to reproductive health services in our country.”

Lauren Handy is the pro-life activist who received the longest sentence. She will spend 57 months in prison and was the first person sentenced for violating the FACE Act.

The enforcement of the FACE Act is led by Clarke, who, following a report from The Daily Signal, recently admitted that she hid an arrest and its subsequent expungement from investigators when she was confirmed to her Justice Department post.

The president’s critics have accused Biden and the DOJ of weaponizing the FACE Act against pro-lifers while failing to charge pro-abortion criminals for the hundreds of attacks on pregnancy resource centers since the May 2022 leak of the draft Supreme Court opinion indicating Roe would soon be overturned.

Some, among them Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, and Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, have called for the repeal of the FACE Act, arguing that it serves no purpose but to target pro-life activists.

“The Biden administration is using the FACE Act to give pro-life activists and senior citizens lengthy prison terms for nonviolent offenses and protests—all while turning a blind eye to the violence, arson, and riots conducted on behalf of ‘approved’ leftist causes,” Lee told The Daily Signal in a Tuesday statement.

“Unequal enforcement of the law is a violation of the law,” he added, “and men and women who try to expose the horrors of abortion are being unjustly persecuted for their motivations.”

The DOJ’s release on the seven pro-lifers who were sentenced to prison time this week describes how the pro-life activists, motivated by a desire to protect unborn babies from abortion, planned a “blockade” at Washington Surgi-Clinic in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. The pro-life activists describe this type of activity as a “rescue,” hoping to stop mothers from aborting their unborn.

Under the FACE Act, such activity is considered a crime. The FACE Act prohibits use of force, obstruction, or property damage intended to interfere with “reproductive health care services.” Since 2022, the year the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the Justice Department has hit at least 40 pro-life activists with FACE-related charges at five different rescues or blockades.

The DOJ describes the D.C. event as a “clinic incursion,” noting that “the defendants met with other co-conspirators to plan their crime, which included making a fake patient appointment to ensure the group’s entry into the clinic, using chains and locks to barricade the facility and passively resisting their anticipated arrests to prolong the blockade.”

“The clinic invasion was advertised on social media as a ‘historic’ event that was live-streamed on Facebook,” the DOJ said “The defendants’ forced entry into the clinic at the outset of the invasion resulted in injury to a clinic nurse. During the blockade, one patient had to climb through a receptionist window to access the clinic, while another laid in the hallway outside of the clinic in physical distress, unable to gain access to the clinic.”

The case was investigated by the FBI’s Washington Field Office. Assistant Director in Charge David Sundberg pointed to the matter as evidence that “the FBI and our judicial system will not tolerate the obstruction of civil rights.”

“The FBI will continue to investigate FACE Act violations in all jurisdictions, so patients and providers can exercise their right to receive or provide lawful reproductive health care without the threat of violence or intimidation,” he added.

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