Ann Arbor bans threats and blocked doors within 50 feet of a house of worship

ANN ARBOR — City Council voted 9-0 on Thursday to make it a crime to threaten people at the door of a house of worship or to block that door.

MLive reported the ordinance is written to follow a New York law. Within 50 feet of a place of worship, it prohibits conduct that would make a person trying to enter or leave reasonably fear for their safety, including threats, harassment, or intimidation. It also prohibits obstructing an entrance or exit so that passage becomes unreasonably difficult or hazardous. A violation is a misdemeanor, up to 90 days in jail and a fine up to $500, or both. Police may set a security perimeter farther out than 50 feet. The vote was final approval on Nov. 5, the paper said.

The same story said the vote comes after 23 years of weekly Saturday protests outside Beth Israel Congregation on Washtenaw Avenue, led by Henry Herskovitz. MLive described signs reading “Jewish Power Corrupts,” “Jews Out of Palestine,” “End Israel,” and “Israel: No Right To Exist,” and said protesters have called for an end to U.S. military aid to Israel and to violence against Palestinians. Congregants told the paper the protests are hateful and antisemitic and that they fear violence. Those descriptions are the paper’s account of the signs and of what congregants said. They are not a city exhibit quoted in an ordinance this story has not read line by line.

What the mayor said the law does not do

Mayor Christopher Taylor told MLive the protests are abhorrent and make worship difficult, and that protesters still have the right to stand on the sidewalk and speak. “The law does not interfere with that,” the paper quoted him saying. That is the line that keeps the ordinance from being a ban on a Saturday sign. The crime, as the paper describes the text, is the threat and the blocked door, not the presence of a protester on a public sidewalk.

What this story did not open

The ordinance PDF was not the document read for this story. The vote count, the 50-foot distance, the penalty, the New York model, and the mayor’s sidewalk line are from MLive’s Nov. 6 account of Thursday’s meeting. If the codified text differs, the code wins. A Saturday protest that stays on the sidewalk and does not threaten or block a door is, on the mayor’s account, still allowed. A person who makes someone afraid to walk in, inside that 50 feet, is who the misdemeanor is written for.

The photograph is downtown Ann Arbor. It is not the synagogue on Washtenaw and it is not the council table.

Sources:
MLive, “Synagogue protester calls new Ann Arbor law an attack on free speech, others applaud it,” Nov. 6, 2026, https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2026/11/synagogue-protester-calls-new-ann-arbor-law-an-attack-on-free-speech-others-applaud-it.html
Photo: Dwight Burdette, “Bank of Ann Arbor, downtown office, Fifth Avenue.jpg”, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ABank_of_Ann_Arbor%2C_downtown_office%2C_Fifth_Avenue.jpg

Ann Arbor

Tags: Ann Arbor · City Council · Beth Israel · First Amendment · Public safety