Anti-Israel protesters who blocked access to the Chicago O’Hare International Airport earlier this year are facing a lawsuit that is seeking to defend the “rights of citizens unlawfully impeded by anti-Israel, pro-Hamas groups engaging in illegal acts of obstruction rather than peaceful protest.”

An anti-Israel blockade in April held up traffic for hours, left thousands of people stuck in their cars, and even forced travelers to walk on the highway to make it to the airport, as the Sun reported at the time, as the protesters chanted “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” 

Now, a lawsuit filed Monday by a public interest law firm called the Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, says it is seeking justice for its client and “thousands of others” who were “falsely imprisoned in their cars or otherwise displaced by the blockade.”

The group notes that the traffic blockade was “part of a coordinated effort named ‘A15 Action,’ which plotted ‘to identify and blockade major choke points in the economy … with the aim of causing the most economic impact.’” The same coordinated effort targeted other major and high traffic areas across the country such as Golden Gate Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, and Seattle-Tacoma Airport, the institute says, noting that it appears to be “part of a broader strategy promoted by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.”

The plaintiff in the case, Christopher Manhart, was “trapped in his car on the ramp to I-190 for over an hour with no way to maneuver out of the brutal, standstill traffic,” the lawsuit claims. It says he ultimately missed his flight and had to spend hours changing his travel plans, and though he was able to travel eventually, he missed “an important work dinner and networking function.” 

Mr. Manhart is seeking to hold the anti-Israel protesters accountable for “their illegal and tortious conspiracy to falsely imprison unsuspecting motorists” and creating a public nuisance that interfered with his and others’ “right to freely travel.”

The lawsuit argues that while the First Amendment protects the rights of protesters to “speak loudly,” “be rude,” and “shock audiences,” they don’t have the right to “use force to block expressways full of bystanders trapped on the roads to create a massive public nuisance.”

“We support the right to protest, but a premeditated attack that injures innocents is not protected by the First Amendment,” an attorney for the institute, Theodore Frank, said in a statement. “By holding the disrupters and their organizational sponsors civilly accountable, we hope to curtail foreign-sponsored and antisemitic actions that harm innocent Americans and puts them at risk.”

The lawsuit names several defendants which include, among others, the Jewish Voice for Peace, National Students for Justice in Palestine, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights — the Sun has reached out to those groups for comment.