The Mississippi politician who traveled to Des Moines in December to destroy the holiday display set up by the Satanic Temple (TST) in the rotunda of the Iowa State Capitol is seeking to have the hate crime charge for his actions dismissed. On Friday, the attorney for Michael Cassidy filed a motion in Polk County District Court arguing, among other things, that the hate crime charge violates Cassidy’s First Amendment rights.
The display, which was approved as one of the several holiday displays for 2023, featured candles, a goat-headed figure of reminiscent of Baphomet and a list of TST’s seven fundamental tenets, which focus on rationality, compassion and the “struggle for justice.” The first tenet is, “One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.” The others follow from this premise.
Over the past decade, TST has routinely applied to place displays on public property when other religions are invited to do so, in order to defend the ideas of both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. It followed the same procedure to get permission for its display as the group that erected a traditional nativity scene in the rotunda did.
The TST display had become a focus of outrage on rightwing media sites and in related social media circles, especially after Fox News ran a story on it. Gov. Kim Reynolds issued a statement calling the TST display “absolutely objectionable.” The governor said she did not support calls to remove the display, and that instead “the best response to objectionable speech is more speech” and inviting “all those of faith” to join her “in praying over the Capitol and recognizing the nativity scene that will be on display — the true reason for the season.”
After smashing the display on Dec. 14, Cassidy surrendered to an Iowa State Patrol officer standing nearby.
Speaking to the Sentinel, a conservative news and opinion site, immediately afterwards, Cassidy said he attacked and beheaded the statue to “awaken Christians to the anti-Christian acts promoted by our government.” The Sentinel quotes Cassidy as saying, “my conscience is held captive to the word of God, not to bureaucratic decree. And so I acted.”
Cassidy was originally charged in December with fourth-degree criminal mischief, a misdemeanor. The Polk County Attorney’s Office subsequently amended the charge, after determining that the value of the property damage done by Cassidy was greater than first estimated, and that the motive for his actions meant the criminal mischief charge qualified as a hate crime under Iowa law. That automatically makes the charge a felony.
“Evidence shows the defendant made statements to law enforcement and the public indicating he destroyed the property because of the victim’s religion,” Lynn Hicks, a spokesperson for the Polk County Attorney’s Office, said in a statement provided to the Des Moines Register.
Under Iowa Code, criminal mischief is a hate crime when it is “committed against a person or a person’s property because of the person’s race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, political affiliation, sex, sexual orientation, age, or disability.”
The Register reports that in the filing on Friday, Cassidy’s attorney argues the hate crime enhancement of the criminal mischief charge should be dismissed because hate crime laws are unconstitutional.
“Because [it] in this case seeks to punish Cassidy’s thoughts, it cannot withstand constitutional muster as it violates the First Amendment which protects ‘the freedom to think,'” attorney Sara Pasquale wrote in the filing.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of hate crime laws in a 1995 decision in a case challenging Wisconsin’s hate crime law. A unanimous court rejected arguments like Pasquale’s with an opinion written by conservative Chief Justice William Rehnquist. The Iowa Supreme Court has also upheld the validity of the state’s hate crime law.
In the filing, Pasquale calls these decisions “misguided.”
Pasquale also argues that even if the state’s hate crime law is valid, it should not apply to Cassidy’s actions for two reasons. First, because the statutory language uses the word “person,” it cannot be used on criminal mischief committed against property owned by an organization. Furthermore, Pasquale said Cassidy’s attack on the TST property doesn’t qualify as a hate crime because TST cannot be considered as having religious beliefs.
The Polk County Attorney’s Office has not yet filed a response to the motion to dismiss the hate crime.
Cassidy began fundraising off his destruction of TST’s holiday display almost immediately. It’s also helped give him a higher profile in rightwing news and social media circles.
Cassidy is a former Navy pilot, who grew up in Virginia. He earned an undergraduate degree in history from Virginia Tech University in 2009. In 2018, he received a liberal arts degree from Harvard University’s extension service.
He has attempted to launch a political career in Mississippi, unsuccessfully running for office in 2022 and 2023 as a Republican. During his runs for office, Cassidy used the same sort of rhetoric he used describing his decision to travel to Iowa to smash the TST display. As a candidate for Congress in 2022, he told a Mississippi newspaper that “The United States is going downhill since the removal of Jesus Christ.” That didn’t stop his political rivals from successfully attacking him as not conservative enough.
Cassidy did not make a court appearance on Friday. His trial is scheduled for May.
