
CV NEWS FEED // CatholicVote Vice President Joshua Mercer debunked the claim that Michael Cassidy’s destruction of the Satan statue in the Iowa Capitol violated the First Amendment.
“What they don’t understand is that they are wrong on the law,” he said on Thursday’s episode of LOOPcast.
Mercer cited the Supreme Court’s unanimous 2009 decision of Pleasant Grove City v. Summum.
In the ruling, all nine justices agreed that Pleasant Grove, Utah had the right to prevent the Summum (a new religious movement) from placing a monument in a city park where a statue of the the Ten Commandments was allowed to stand.
The Court stated that “placing a monument in a public park is government speech,” Mercer clarified. “So, it is not covered by the First Amendment.”
“The state of Iowa has every right to exercise its own government speech on its government property,” he added. “You do not have a First Amendment right to have every viewpoint represented.”
“Don’t use religious freedom as an excuse to have evil stuff in our state capitols,” Mercer concluded.
Writing the Court’s majority opinion in Pleasant Grove City, Justice Samuel Alito held that “although a park is a traditional public forum for speeches and other transitory expressive acts, the display of a permanent monument in a public park is not a form of expression to which forum analysis applies.”
“Instead,” Alito continued, “the placement of a permanent monument in a public park is best viewed as a form of government speech and is therefore not subject to scrutiny under the Free Speech Clause.”
In his concurrence, the late Justice Antonin Scalia stated that unlike the Summun monument, “the Ten Commandments ‘have an undeniable historical meaning’ in addition to their ‘religious significance.’”
Liberal Justice Stephen Breyer noted in his own concurring opinion that Summun “did not describe the monument’s historical significance or respondent’s connection to the community.”
Cassidy took to X Friday to criticize self-identified Christians who slammed his tearing down of the Satanic statue for various reasons.
“To Christians who defend Satanic altars when they speak with their church, family, friends, coworkers, or on [X],” wrote the veteran: “Would you use the same argument if you were speaking with God?”
