Continuing fallout from recent tantrum by TST owner “Lucien Greaves” wrecks another legal case, this time over invocations at Chicago City Council

A day before a status hearing was set to go before a federal judge for a religious discrimination lawsuit by The Satanic Temple, the attorney representing the infernal religious organization notified the judge that that would no longer be necessary, voluntarily ending the case for good.

Plaintiffs The Satanic Temple and Adam Vavrick and Defendant City of Chicago, through their respective counsel, hereby stipulate that pursuant to Fed. R. Civ. P. 41 this case should be dismissed without costs or fees to either party.

Stipulation to Dismiss – Document #35

The following day, July 24, Judge Joan Lefkow dismissed the cases with prejudice “with each party to bear its own costs and fees.”

The Satanic Temple Inc. and Vavrick, an ordained minister of the Satanic Temple and a leader of TST’s Illinois congregation, sought to deliver an invocation before a Chicago City Council meeting. However, they were not invited after, TST claims, more than three years of asking to deliver an invocation and not being given an explanation for why they were not invited.

TST sued the city in federal court on May 3, 2023, alleging violations of the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause.

We wrote about the background of this whole thing in December 2023 and again in May 2024; in the latter, we also made a bit of a prediction there at the very end in reference to the scheduled trial date:

“Given TST’s usual burn-through rate and the ongoing major schism centered on TST Ministry, it will also be interesting to see if ‘Minister of Satan Adam Vavrick’ is even still associated with TST and ordained by the time 2025 rolls around.”

And wouldn’t you know it, a little more than a month after we said that, the plaintiff Vavrick announced he’d left The Satanic Temple Ministry:

This isn’t the first time that The Satanic Temple’s leadership structure and personnel have blown up their projects in a big way. Infamously, TST put a gag order on their own Missouri abortion client “Mary Doe” in 2016 and told them she’d have to pay them back legal fees to keep her involved in the case after she soured on owner Doug “Lucien Greaves” Misicko and the organization as a whole. The 2018 schism largely over Misicko’s ties to alt right figures, past bigoted statements resurfacing, and authoritarian style of Misicko and co-owner Cevin “Malcolm Jarry” Soling probably would have sunk the org then if not for legal threats to silence members and the propaganda stylings of Penny Lane’s “Hail Satan?” hadn’t arrived soon after.

But even in Chicago/Illinois specifically, it’s come up before, as we detailed in our “Anatomy of a News Cycle” article looking at the slapdash installation of a figure for the Illinois State Capitol in December 2021.

This was going to be a hard case to win or anyone given that The Satanic Temple is the plaintiff and the reality of that loathsome organization of grifters and clowns is what it is, which comes out during discovery and depositions. However, as we said before, their local attorney Adele Nichols here seems to be a serious, competent civil rights lawyer — in direct contrast to TST’s main lawyer Matt Kezhaya, as even his pro hac vice declaration in this case makes abundantly clear (twice sanctioned and also admonished in federal court). This may have been a winnable case, or at least one that could have led to a favorable settlement before the city of Chicago learned who they were dealing with.

Instead, it was the ego, self-destructiveness, and demand for fealty to Misicko personally that seems to have ruined yet another lawsuit for The Satanic Temple, burning through and pushing out yet another key figure on the ground doing actual work for TST.

Update (7/31/24): This was apparently independently confirmed by other former members of the Temple who were privy to some of Misicko’s interactions with Vavrick.

Comment
byu/JaneDoeThe33rd from discussion
inSatanicTemple_Reddit

u/cassiopeia1280
He had good reason to leave. I was privy to some emails between him and lucien and lucien displayed nothing but rudeness, arrogance, and disrespect to someone who was an incredible asset to the satanic and wider religious community. Losing this lawsuit is a huge blow, as is the loss of an incredible minister, and lucien has no one to blame but himself.

u/TertiaWithershins
I would characterize it as outright verbal abuse.

“Lucien Greaves” claims that he is the only person who is possibly capable of leading TST and fighting theocracy, but the actual truth is that if he had done nothing, the case here would have proceeded better. More generally, the less Misicko and his hand-picked councils are involved with something, the greater a chance that project has to be successful on its own terms rather than the terms that the Temple’s projects consistently seem to be judged on: how much it aggrandizes and profits TST’s two owners.

Again, read through the way Misicko talks about himself to who he perceives as underlings and look at the sort of organization that has survived the latest schism. Depending on whether you want the proximate or ultimate cause, it began either because, proximately, a snitch showed Misicko that people were making fun of him with silly pictures and he couldn’t stand it; or, ultimately, because he heard that the then-No. 3 person in the org had built a community too much personal loyalty and autonomy, and so Misicko wanted him and all such people gone.

One of these days, The Satanic Temple will probably win one of these cases. Not the ACLU or Freedom From Religion Foundation giving TST and its lawyers a fidget spinner and saying, “Go play outside while the adults talk and get you a favorable settlement and a shiny dollar”; no, TST will actually have some success entirely or mostly on their own. But the reason that hasn’t happened yet is very clear: The Satanic Temple is very bad at court cases because its owners are malicious and incompetent.

And because Doug Misicko and Cevin Soling have been showing you what their priorities are for decades, which certainly isn’t fighting for progressive causes or against Christian Nationalism. “When someone shows you who they are believe them.” We’ve seen what TST is. Believe that this is what they will continue to be.

Why You Haven’t Left The Satanic Temple