Thread by @QueerSatanic

recently had a chance to look again at The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Lamar Advertising of Louisiana, LLC, a lawsuit filed over TST submitting a design to a billboard company, being told "no", and suing about it before quietly ending the case months later

caseinfo.arcourts.gov/cconnect/PROD/…

originally, it was quite loud. TST sent a press release out about it back in September 2020, and what do you know, the AP even picked it up

-prnewswire.com/news-releases/…
-apnews.com/article/arkans…

the news just reports whatever TST says happened b/c TST are the ones with the news release & with the complaint filed - a complaint that has nothing to do with the merits yet, of course

so TST claims religious discrimination & breach of contract
satanic.wiki/images/8/8e/04…

TST *does* seem to have a p good point about corporate monopolies: if you wanna buy in Indiana or Arkansas, there's effectively only one choice, right?

but the thing is, TST openly admits they've worked with Lamar in the past. Religious discrimination is an uphill battle already

indeed, what they run into is that Lamar calls *these particular* ads "misleading and offensive"

See if you can spot for yourself what's the problem here. If you can't, Lamar will definitely tell you in their own Motion for Judgment

Lamar's lawyers argue: "While both the Past Designs and the Abortion Ritual Designs included TST’s
religious iconography and beliefs, only the latter advocate for the ability to avert state laws or to
have a first trimester abortion on demand."

TST also included as evidence a bunch of other ads Lamar had run, like anti-abortion ones.

Lamar says:
> The distinguishing factor between...[others and] those rejected here is that the content of the latter advocates for averting state laws/restrictions while the former do not

There's also some stuff abt how Lamar "reserves the right to reject or remove any copy either before
or after installation" & solely decides what's good taste, so it's NOT a violation of their contract to deny TST regardless

but you can read for yourself
satanic.wiki/images/e/e7/04…

This all starts in September 2020, the motion to dismiss is made Feb. 11, 2021, and two weeks later, TST makes their own motion to dismiss w/o prejudice. Presumably, there's a settlement? idk, ianal

but also, in the meantime, TST had put some billboards up

as early as 12/17/20, TST had already found another company (Clear Channel) willing to put up one of the billboards with similar language around Miami & parts of East Texas
houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…

dallasobserver.com/news/the-satan…

miaminewtimes.com/news/satanic-t…

spectrumlocalnews.com/tx/south-texas…

so they effectively turned one billboard company saying, "you can't claim you have powers to circumvent the law when you don't, while using our signs" into a bunch of facile media coverage that didn't do the same due diligence of asking, "Uh, have you won any of these cases yet?"

Also, another good question to ask: "Hey, who the heck is Reason Alliance Ltd., and what are they doing paying for this billboard?"

Or "why is its listed mail address a UPS store? with no Unit#?"
(they actually updated it to 64 Bridge St in 2018 - corp.sec.state.ma.us/CorpWeb/CorpSe…)

but if it's "Reason Alliance" paying for this, it means you don't have to get into questions like *which* The Satanic Temple is paying for this, since The Satanic Temple Inc, the nonprofit, wasn't established till Nov 2017, after the early campaign began

charlotteobserver.com/news/nation-wo…

probably, that was the for-profit United Federation of Churches LLC d/b/a "The Satanic Temple" who paid for the previous billboard, maybe utilizing some of the $17.5K Reason Alliance Ltd sent them that year, apparently to "Encourage Reasoning"

satanic.wiki/images/9/98/02…

but if it was a for-profit expense before, why is it a nonprofit now? was there a particular fundraiser?

these are answerable questions, but as yet it's hard to keep track of how $$ is flowing between for-profit, non-profit, church, & individual owners who like to use pseudonyms

are there any good guys in this story?

probably not

but it's an example of the sort of unraveling that happens every time you start following thread anywhere on something TST related, even the boring cases against billboard monopolies that end quietly in Arkansas courts

@threadreaderapp unroll