An Arizona street preacher is suing the city of Tucson after being arrested for “sermonizing” during a Christmas festival. David Hoffman is a street preacher who has shared the Gospel at large public gatherings for decades, prompted by a calling he received in sixth grade. “What we do is we share the gospel with people that are most likely never going to go into a church, and we go to events and places where there’s not already a Christian witness, and we have conversations,” he told Fox News Digital. For ten years, he has attended Tucson’s Winterhaven Festival of Lights to share his faith with attendees. However, during last year’s festival in December 2025, he was banned from entering festival grounds due to the event’s new policies which prohibited preachers like Hoffman on the grounds and only allowed them to speak in a designated “free expression zone” outside. Hoffman described the site as “like a cage.” “And it felt kind of, just really, it felt funny because it’s like, you know, putting the Christians over kind of in this specific area,” he said.

When Hoffman attempted to speak to festival goers, he was threatened with arrest for criminal trespass. “Upon entering the event, we were told that we can’t have any kind of religious expression. They said that you can be there to participate in looking at the lights. But the moment, you know, we tried to talk to somebody or give out a gospel tract, that would lead to a violation of what they were enforcing,” he said. He was told his attempts to discuss Jesus with attendees would be considered “sermonizing” and would violate the new policies. He was even told if he was approached by someone asking how to be saved, he would have to take the discussion outside the festival grounds. After receiving several warnings, Hoffman was eventually escorted out of the event by four police officers.

Hoffman is now represented by First Liberty Institute (FLI), which warned the city that the ban was unconstitutional in December 2025. “This event is happening on city streets and city sidewalks, and in constitutional law, those areas, along with, say, a public park, offer the most constitutional protection of any location you can be at,” said First Liberty legal counsel Garrett Bell. The city did not respond to FLI’s complaint. “Noise, including from traffic on Fort Lowell Road, forces Hoffman to shout and raise his voice, undermining his conversational style,” the complaint contends. “Sequestering Hoffman and those with him in a small zone away from the festival demeans them in front of the same people they are trying to reach.” The city of Tucson has not released any statements regarding the pending complaint, although it has been reported that the new ordinance was added due to complaints. Brad Jacob, a constitutional law scholar at Regent University School of Law, expects a quick resolution to the lawsuit. “This looks like blatant content-based speech restriction by the government, and I think they’re pretty clearly going to lose as the thing stands,” he said. Hoffman is pressing for a quick resolution as he sees the real issue as an eternal one. “A lot of people are living in brokenness. A lot of people are living in separation from God,” he said. “So, we go to events like Winterhaven that have a lot of people because that’s the greatest opportunity to reach the most people with the gospel.”