Building Bridges for the Right to Worship Act

CoHNA's Las Vegas chapter hosted an interfaith event with policymakers
to back the bipartisan legislation even as CoHNA spoke in support of the bill on Capitol Hill

LAS VEGAS, Sept. 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Las Vegas chapter of the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) hosted a community gathering in support of the Right to Worship Act on September 16, 2026, at the Sahara West Library, in Las Vegas. The bipartisan bicameral bill seeks to protect worshippers from intimidation and disruption via a 100-foot, protest-free buffer zone around houses of worship during religious services. Peaceful expression protected by the First Amendment is excluded from the bill's prohibited activities. 

The event was held under CoHNA's Building Bridges and Connecting Communities initiative, which brings faith and civic leaders together around shared concerns and values. It was one of two CoHNA coast-to-coast engagements on the bill that day. As the Las Vegas chapter convened local leaders in Nevada, CoHNA leadership was also in Washington, DC, making the case for the same legislation at the press conference, organized on Capitol Hill, by its Congressional sponsors.

In Vegas, the afternoon opened with an introduction to CoHNA and its government affairs work, followed by a short presentation on the Right to Worship Act, by CoHNA's director of government relations Sudha Jaganathan.

Several policymakers and Congressional staff attended the event. Among them was Nevada Assemblywoman Heidi Kasama who spoke to the interfaith community. We were also pleased to have with us Senator Catherine Cortez Masto's Las Vegas staff assistant Martin Hernandez as well as Senator Jacky Rosen's Las Vegas regional director Nethmini Happawana.

Speakers from across Las Vegas's religious and civic landscape also offered brief remarks. Vin Manjing, a nun with the Nevada Buddhist Association, said that religious communities need to come together, be strong, and protect their faith

B. Bhatti from the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Parkash spoke on behalf of the Sikh community. He highlighted that Sikhism teaches respect for all people and for human values, and reiterated that religious freedom matters for everyone. 

Byron Brooks, representing the Jewish Federation and StandWithUS of Nevada, described a climate in which bad actors have been emboldened and conditions have grown progressively worse for most faith-based organizations, including Jewish Americans, who have faced a sharp rise in antisemitism since October 7.

Speaking for members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Corey Wozniak called the bill a wise measure and said that as a religious person he felt protected by it.

Farrah Acheson of the Nevada Muslim Caucus spoke to the rise in Islamophobic attacks alongside other forms of religious hostility. She urged minority communities to come together and make clear that they are an integral part of America and are not going anywhere. She pointed to her own Jewish and Hindu friendships as evidence of what united communities can accomplish.

Pushpita Prasad, CoHNA's chief communications officer, spoke for the Hindu and Jain communities. The Las Vegas Hindu-Jain Temple and the Fiji temple were represented at the gathering as well.

José Melendrez, vice provost at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, addressed the university's role in community engagement. Students from diverse communities share the campus, he noted, and the divisions that came to the forefront nationally after October 7 required sustained effort at UNLV to keep the peace through a period of heated exchange. Everyone has the right to speak up, he reiterated, which is precisely why finding peaceful ways to work together is critical.

Swadeep Nigam of VegasDesi, a community news portal, who helped convene many of the day's guests, also spoke at the event.

The range of voices in the room mirrored the coalition behind the bill nationally: more than 30 national organizations have endorsed the Right to Worship Act, among them the Anti-Defamation League, the Islamic Society of North America, United Sikhs, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and CoHNA.

Each of the three Southern Nevada Congressional members and the two Senators in DC have acknowledged the Right to Worship Act and are reviewing these; and when it comes to vote, the Las Vegas community hopes they will stand to protect the American Right to Religious Freedom and the Right to Worship without intimidation or curbing any congregant or devotee from their places of worship.

"Nevada showed today that protecting places of worship is not an issue for any one faith," Jaganathan said. "Multiple faith communities came together to endorse a simple principle: we should be able to worship freely and without fear, and that does not weaken the right to peaceful expression," she added. 

Capitol Hill Support

Across the country, in D.C. the same day, CoHNA's chief operating officer and New Jersey chapter director Hitesh Trivedi joined a press conference held by Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-NY) and Rep. Brad Knott (R-NC), the bill's House co-leads, alongside representatives of more than a dozen national religious organizations, urging both chambers to advance the legislation this Congress. A Senate companion measure has been introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Elissa Slotkin (D-MI).

Trivedi spoke about the dozen Hindu temples that have been desecrated, vandalised, or threatened, and in one case even shot at, since 2022. He said these incidents of Hinduphobia send a chilling message to the broader Hindu community. The bill, he said, would help ensure that "devotees of every faith can visit their places of worship and pray without fear, amid a time of rising Hinduphobia."

About CoHNA
CoHNA is a grassroots level advocacy and civil rights organization dedicated to improving the understanding of Hinduism in North America by working on matters related to the Hindu community and by educating the public about Hindu heritage and tradition. For more information, please visit https://cohna.org or follow us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and on Instagram.

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SOURCE Coalition of Hindus of North America