So to Speak Podcast Transcript: Stress-testing the limits of the First Amendment w/ Chaz Stevens

Note: This is an unedited rush transcript. Please check any quotations against the audio recording.

Chaz Stevens: I noticed that they were putting up church banners. I drove around to all schools, little Sunday afternoon driving [inaudible] [00:00:07], and there's a church banner. So, I wrote to the Broward County School System, said, “Church of Satanology and Perpetual Choiré where it's Wednesday. It's cold beer and wings, hot wings, and the mariachi band. We want to put up a sign.” Oh, no, you can't do that.

Nico Perrino: Next to the church banner.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I took them to court.

Nico Perrino: You're listening to So to Speak, the Free Speech Podcast brought to you by FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. All right, folks, welcome back to So to Speak, the Free Speech Podcast where every other week we take an uncensored look at the world of free expression through the law, philosophy, and stories that define your right to free speech. I'm your host, Nico Perrino.

Debates over religious freedom have shaped American life for centuries, from Quakers facing persecution and prosecution in colonial America, to The Crucible, to South Park. Fights over religious expression have repeatedly tested the country's commitment to free speech and religious liberty. At the heart of these debates are a few basic questions. Does the constitution protect only popular beliefs, or all of them? If the government opens the door for one form of religious expression, does it have to allow for every form? And if not, where does the constitution draw the line?

Few people have tested those questions more publicly and more directly than today's guest, Chaz Stevens. Chaz is the founder of the Church of Satanology. For more than two decades, he has used satire, publicity stunts, and litigation to challenge what he sees as hypocrisy in how governments apply religious liberty protections. Again and again, his activism has forced public officials into uncomfortable constitutional territory, testing whether protections for religious freedom are truly universal.

Today, Chaz joins us to talk about those battles, the philosophy behind his activism, and what he's learned from years of pushing the boundaries of the First Amendment. Chaz, thanks for joining us today.

Chaz Stevens: That's a hell of an introduction, sir. Thank you very much.

Nico Perrino: Well, I hope we can live up to it.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, let's see, sir. Let's see. I've been studying all my life for this moment.

Nico Perrino: All right. Well, let's get going. I think the first question our listeners are going to have after listening to that introduction is, so, Satanology, what is that?

Chaz Stevens: For years, I thought it was a religion. And then, I sued the Broward County school systems, and the lawyer for the Broward County school system, a very talented fellow, asked me to define it. And I realized it's just a stress test. It's a way of determining if the government is complying with the First Amendment.

Nico Perrino: Okay. So, it's not a religion.

Chaz Stevens: No, sir.

Nico Perrino: And you are not what some might call a Satanist, a believer in Satan, the doctrines of Satan? I don't know what Satanism is, but presumably it has something to do with Satan. Does the Church of Satanology have anything to do with Satan?

Chaz Stevens: Satanists and atheists tend to hate me. They loathed me. No, my gig is all about – that's why I'm here, Nico. My gig is all about constitutional rights. I don't care what you believe in. You're free to believe whatever you want to do. I will back your right to believe that. But I'm not a Satanist. I'm an atheist, but I'm not a Satanist. I'm not with the Satanic temple, any of that stuff.

Nico Perrino: Okay, so, then, Satanology, let's try and define. Is it a philosophy? A way of life, a way of going about something, a view on life, then?

Chaz Stevens: No, it's a stick. It's a stick. It's a really pointy, sharp stick to poke and prod those in charge, to make sure that if they are going to open up the public forum to certain views, I'm going to stress test the living shit out of them by giving something that they don't like, and they're going to have to either let me in, or take everybody else out.

Nico Perrino: Okay, so, let's talk about what that stick looks like in real life, the ways that you are poking and prodding different government officials to apply viewpoint neutral standards –

Chaz Stevens: Correct.

Nico Perrino: – to speech. I read somewhere that, for example, if a town council opens up its council meeting with a prayer, for example, you will sometimes ask to recite a prayer to the Church of Satanology. In one case, I believe I read that you told the government officials that it might involve mariachi music, twerking, nachos. It kind of sounds like my religion if I'm speaking personally, but the government officials weren't too keen on this approach?

Chaz Stevens: Listen, the Catholics like the Body of Christ with wafers and grape juice. I think beer and wings, bro. And who doesn't want La Bamba played in the background? That was that was Satan or silence, and it's six or seven different municipalities in South Florida. I forced them into decision. I use this thing called – some call it malicious compliance. I call it textual compliance, which is textual literalism. I force a binary decision, okay? Which is, if you're going to allow your prayer – and this was Dania Beach, where I listened to an invocation.

The commissioner, 23 praise gods in about two minutes. And I'm thinking. I'm sitting there. I'm just trying to get my boat dock approved. I'm not at Sunday school. So, I saw this and then I said, “Huh.” So, I asked, let Satan have his two minutes of time. I have six different communities in South Florida said no. They them switched from invocation to a moment of silence, or just skipped the whole thing altogether and got right to the business at hand.

Nico Perrino: Okay, so, they understood, then, that if they were going to have a prayer to a certain deity, in this case the Christian one, that they needed to allow for you to have your prayer – in this case, it sounds like you're talking about actual Satan – or they couldn't have it at all.

Chaz Stevens: You would think that's the case, right? So, it's viewpoint discrimination. Allow everybody in, or allow none in. The problem is it's like Scottish law. There's three options. All, none, or some. Some are those that we favor. Let me tell you how they favor that. The Christians will come in and ask to do something. Church of Satanology will come in, and six months later, they're still dithering around, trying to get my approval, seeing everything else. So, there's this favoritism that shows up in different ways. In theory, it's let me in, or take everybody else out.

Nico Perrino: So, I read that you said, “I don't believe in Satan.” We've already discussed that. “I don't believe in God, or any of the 10,000 gods that have existed here on planet Earth.”

Chaz Stevens: You guys have done your work. Excellent.

Nico Perrino: Well, yeah. I thank producer Emily for digging up these gems of a quotes. But she found that what you do believe in is the First Amendment and the Constitution. So, like Milton chose Satan, I chose Satan to make it really uncomfortable. What do you mean, Milton chose Satan? This is presumably the poet John Milton, who wrote the famous poem Paradise Lost in the 17th century.

Chaz Stevens: Exactly right. Milton was religious. Milton's idea of Satan was a rebel, an outcast, a guy that pushed boundaries, and that's where my idea of Satanology came from, which was this. Listen, when you're trying to talk to elected officials, and you're talking about Milton, you've lost the –

Nico Perrino: Well, even just mentioning Satan, that's why I'm trying to unpack the Satan thing, just using the word Satan, and that you're the Church of Satanology. Regardless of what that belief actually entails, I'm sure it puts their guards up, it puts their Dukes up, and they want nothing to do with it, even if what you are saying has nothing to do with praise of Satan.

Chaz Stevens: I got you. I got you. Okay, so, imagine this. “Mr. Mayor, Chaz Stevens here with the Church of SpongeBob SquarePants. Do you mind if I give an invocation?” You're going to laugh me off. I'm not going to irritate anybody. I'm not going to push the boundaries. I'm a stress tester. I'm a constitutional stress tester. I work for a small little rocket company owned by the United States government, where we debug systems.

So, I look at constitutional law as code. I look to exquisitely apply the law. Why Satan? Because it's a bugaboo, because it's going to drive attention. SpongeBob, how fun that is – Cartman, how fun that is – isn't going to drive attention. Satan would drive attention. If there was some other more ridiculous idea, I'm open. If your callers want to call in and try something else, and it would get the response, I'm all for it.

Nico Perrino: So, you like strict rules.

Chaz Stevens: Correct.

Nico Perrino: Strict boundaries, things that are easy to understand, things that do not have ambiguity surrounding them. And if you have this rule in the United States that the freedom of speech must not be abridged, or Congress shall make no law establishing a religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, you think that needs to apply regardless of what someone says or believes. But you have found that when Satan is mentioned, or something else that is deeply offensive –

Chaz Stevens: All hell breaks loose.

Nico Perrino: All hell breaks loose, and these constant constitutional rules, or these codes, to apply the rocket analogy again, just fall apart.

Chaz Stevens: Correct.

Nico Perrino: And that bugs you. That just gets at your core, and you've devoted, it sounds like, your life, to highlighting that hypocrisy.

Chaz Stevens: I ask people this question, what's in the First Amendment? What's exactly in the First Amendment? Freedom speech, freedom of religion, freedom of press.

Nico Perrino: Assembly.

Chaz Stevens: Assembly.

Nico Perrino: Hang on, don't give it up yet. So, the fifth one, I know you know this. People will stumble on the fifth. I said, there's the fifth, and that's where I live. That's where I live. And that's the right to redress your grievances. That's the right, Nico, to bitch at the government. I look to stress test. I use my engineering background, and I apply my engineering principles of testing, of debugging, to law.

To me, it's the same thing. With my wiring, with my neuro-spicy wiring, it's the same thing. Things that I learned in engineering apply directly to the law. And then, because I'm really good at pattern detection, and really good at finding stuff, coming through sideways, finding stuff that doesn't make sense, I find all these things where they wrote the law, but they did a bad job.

Chaz Stevens: There's a bug in the code.

Nico Perrino: Got a prop here for our listeners, who can't see what Chaz is holding up.

Chaz Stevens: In 2022, the State of Texas wrote a law that said we want to put “In God We Trust” on all the walls, in our public school districts. And the signs have to be 16 x 20; they have to be durable; that has to have the Texas flag. They said that's the law. Got to have the words “In God We Trust.” I'm biking off Fort Lauderdale Beach. If you ever have a chance to bike on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, I highly recommend it.

Nico Perrino: My sister lives in Fort Lauderdale.

Chaz Stevens: Oh, there you go. Borrow her bike, grab her mountain bike and go toddling along. So, there I am, and I stop, and I went, “Holy shit. They didn't say it had to be in English.” I'm an artist. All this artwork is mine. Forget what this says. This is just beautiful. It's calligraphy. It's beautiful.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, you're holding up apparently something that would meet all of those standards, but instead of being in English, it’s in Arabic.

Chaz Stevens: Yes, it’s in Arabic. Yeah, I'm going to get to that in a second. Yeah, I'll reveal here, which is this. So, I'm on the beach. I call my partner up. I said, “I got them. I got them. Arabic, or Klingon, or Hebrew, or Punjabi, or but the Arabic is going to flip them the fuck out. Oh, God, in Texas.” So, like everybody else, I go to the Googles and I said, “Make me the Sanskrit of ‘In God We Trust’ so I can draw it out,” and it did that, beautiful. And I posted that, and I put it up on the social medias. And I got burned, burned by the people in the Middle East. Why? Because Google translated “In God We Trust” to “In God We Trusted.”

Nico Perrino: Be careful with Google.

Chaz Stevens: Oh, yeah. Can you tell this is “In God We Trust” versus “In God We Trusted”? No, shit no.

Nico Perrino: That could say “In Chaz we trust,” and I wouldn't know the difference.

Chaz Stevens: There we go, another sign.

Nico Perrino: And there is a sign that says “In Chaz We Trust.” I swear I didn't look at this before I said that.

Chaz Stevens: All others pay cash.

Nico Perrino: So, what we're looking at here, Chaz, is an upside down cross illuminated with what looks like Christmas lights. On the vertical, it says in “In Chaz We Trust,” and on the horizontal there is “All Others Pay Cash.”

Chaz Stevens: Correct.

Nico Perrino: Where was this?

Chaz Stevens: That was the city of Hallandale. They left open –

Nico Perrino: In Florida?

Chaz Stevens: In Florida, Hallandale, just south of Fort Lauderdale. They left open a little hole. They put “In God We Trust on the back, behind the dais.” So, I said I want to put my sign up there, and they said okay. This was before we did something else. But hang on, before we moved from Texas, so, I got this done, and I hired a team of people in the Middle East, because I don't care what you believe in. I'm not poking fun at your religion. I'm poking fun at using your religion to gain an edge. I sent 25,000 of these to Texas. These signs, 25,000 posters that fully complied, albeit in Arabic, fully comply with Texas law. Not a single one got posted.

Nico Perrino: So, this is something you do often, right? Often during the Christmas holidays, different communities will allow for religions to have a nativity scene or something like that, for churches to put that up on city property. And what you do, if I'm understanding correctly, is you test whether these communities are establishing a religion by prohibiting other religions for putting up a structure or a scene alongside these scenes from the Christian religion. How often are you denied? How often are you allowed to put up your structures? What have you encountered in the years that you've done this?

Chaz Stevens: 2013, I got word that the State of Florida, capital rotunda – Rick Scott Skeletor was governor at the time – allowed a crèche.

Nico Perrino: What's that?

Chaz Stevens: A manger.

Nico Perrino: Oh, okay, okay.

Chaz Stevens: Baby Jesus Motel 6. And I made a 6’00” tall Festivus pole that we put up in the belly of the Florida rotunda, with Pabst Blue Ribbon cans. Rick Scott went to impinge my rights, said that he was going to allow the creche, the menorah – the manger, excuse me, the manger – but not allow the Pabst Blue Ribbon can. In the state where I was, right in the rotunda, there was a sign that says, “Free speech zone.”

When I do all this stuff, it all comes down to one secret sauce, Nico, which is force a binary decision. Force the government into a binary decision. All or none, yes or no, red or blue, one or zero. The magic is to find that. That is my art. I don't protest. I don't wave flags. I don't get out and chant. My art is to file paperwork. That's the art. The art is to figure out where the hole is, to expose the issue. There's no page in the playbook for me. They don't know how to respond to me.

Nico Perrino: That, for our listeners who do not see it, can either be described as an abstract pine tree, or a very large butt plug.

Chaz Stevens: Very large butt plug. Eleven inches tall, nine pounds. Back to state capital of South Carolina.

Nico Perrino: Chaz is holding up a photo now, yeah.

Chaz Stevens: If you look here, you'll see that where the nether of Jesus's little pixelated parts is a red dot there. That was the original butt plug. That was a doorbell. So, when you it, it rang the doorbell at the top that said, “What the fuck, Jesus? What the fuck, Jesus? What the fuck, Jesus?”

Nico Perrino: This is going to offend a lot of people. Just so our listeners are clear on what Chaz is showing here, it's a photo of an upside down black cross with an outline of, presumably, Jesus hanging upside down on this cross. There's a doorbell that had the butt plug on it, and then, there was a sign that said –

Chaz Stevens: Insane we trust.

Nico Perrino: – with God crossed out.

Chaz Stevens: Okay, so, that was 2016. I was yet...

Nico Perrino: And they let you put that up?

Chaz Stevens: Yes.

Nico Perrino: Was it a fight, or did they just let you do it? They kind of understood their requirement that they couldn't discriminate based on viewpoint, wow.

Chaz Stevens: Let me go off tangent for a second. The State of Florida removed the sign where I had my Pabst Blue Ribbon Festivus poll. It said, “The Free Speech Zone in the State of Florida Rotunda.” They took the sign down, because I put up stand-ups of Tucker Carlson as the Grim Reaper and Fauci as Fauci Claws in 2021. They didn't like the fact that I didn't get permission to put Tucker Carlson up. So, I'm banned from putting anything up now for my display.

Nico Perrino: Oh, so, when you submitted the paperwork, you said you were going to put a Fauci up, but you didn't know Tucker Carlson?

Chaz Stevens: Yeah. So, all this stuff was kind of a grenade, looking for the way for me to do business. It was inefficient. Poking fun at someone just to poke fun at someone is good for laughs. It's not good for making change.

Nico Perrino: But this is all in service of something, right? It's service of your belief in the First Amendment and its core values, and making sure that government officials are committed to those values? Or is it fun just for fun's sake?

Chaz Stevens: Early on, it was fun for fun's sake. I didn't understand what I was doing. My uncles fought in World War II. One uncle in particular, Uncle Ray, my namesake, he was in Patton's army. Baston, Bulge. That's the blood that flows through me. I don't have the right stuff, not like these guys. I wake up every morning looking to protect our constitutional rights in my own way.

In 2022, a guy by the name of Ron DeSantis, running for president, he made a big stink out of wanting to ban books. Anybody could ban the books. You could file an objection, don't care who you are, file an objection, and then they had to pull the book, and then go through the kind of thing. I really wasn't paying attention to that. And then, I read they banned some math books, and that caught my attention. So, I asked the State of Florida to ban – 63 school districts – to ban the Bible.

Nico Perrino: So, you filed one of these objections that you say allowed for.

Chaz Stevens: Correct. Please take down the Bible. In the Bible, in Bible 1 and Bible 2, there's plenty of objectionable material in there. Cannibalism, bestiality, murder, rape, pillaging, slavery, drunken orgies with your father and daughters. Just the whole list is a little – but yet, there we are.

Nico Perrino: The Old Testament's got a lot going on in there.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, you could make a good Showtime movie. So, I asked, “Let's ban the Bible.” Broward County School System did that for two years. They were supposed to remove the book within six weeks. They didn't.

Nico Perrino: Remove the book for further investigation.

Chaz Stevens: Correct.

Nico Perrino: Presumably, see if it fit the statutory requirements for removal.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, so, if somebody says remove Tony Morrison's book, or Huck Finn, they took Huck Finn down in Tampa. Oh, Huck Finn has a bad word in it, and it is a bad word, but it's of the times. I'm not here to argue one way the other.

Nico Perrino: Sure.

Chaz Stevens: But let's take the book off the shelf until we figure out what the hell to do with the book. Well, they didn't do that [inaudible] [00:21:47] anything else. And my argument was, because I'm a nerd, kids don't actually read books anymore. They have an iPad. And the school hands out Google notebooks, and notepads, and laptops, and everything else. And you ban pornography. If you can ban porn pretty well – except for a 12 year old boy that'll figure out how to get around it – but if you ban pornography, you can ban the Bible.

They didn't do that. They argued that the book had literary significance. I thought, at that time, game over. Moms for Liberty, that fella in Tallahassee or Leon County, they won. I thought that, until one day I got a call, “Chaz, reporter Bob with Fortune Magazine here on the line with you. Ron DeSantis rewrote and nuked the book ban, and on the dais, pointed his finger at you, and said the reason we had to change the law is because of you.”

What do you think? Holy shit, I'll take that. I'll take it forever. He changed the law that said – instead of anybody can file as many as they want, once a month. So, now, in the State of Florida, it's curtailed. You don't hear it in the news anymore.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I remember when all of these efforts to restrict books that could be made available in school libraries was going on. That was a big story in 2023, when Moms for Liberty in particular were pursuing this campaign. And I think it was Missouri or some other Midwestern state had written a law that was so broad that The Diary of Anne Frank, for example, was get –

Chaz Stevens: Missouri, I think it was.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I thought it was Missouri, too. That was the state that came to mind, but I couldn't confirm that, just from memory. You, in some of your cases, you're not just doing the activism. You're also filing lawsuits?

Chaz Stevens: The answer is yes. Let me not bury the lead. I learned to become a lawyer. Apologies to the lawyers. I'm a shitty lawyer, but I learned to become a lawyer in seven months. Okay? And I'll tell you what that means.

Nico Perrino: You're not an actual practicing lawyer.

Chaz Stevens: No, no, no.

Nico Perrino: You learned enough about this, okay.

Chaz Stevens: Pro se, pro se. I've won.

Nico Perrino: That means you file your own lawsuits and represent yourself.

Chaz Stevens: I represent myself. So, around the same time that Broward County was dickering with me with the Bibles, around the chain link fence, they had church banners.

Nico Perrino: At the schools?

Chaz Stevens: At the schools. I'm sure you're familiar with Bremerton versus Kennedy.

Nico Perrino: Yes.

Chaz Stevens: I asked to put a Church of Satanology banner up at Bremerton, and they said, “We don't do any more banners out there.” So, well aware of what happened at Bremerton, I noticed that they were putting up church banners. I drove around to all schools, little Sunday afternoon driving [inaudible] [00:24:51], and there's a church banner. So, I wrote to the Broward County School System, said, “Church of Satanology and Perpetual Choiré where it's Wednesday. It's cold beer and wings, hot wings, and the mariachi band. We want to put up a sign.” Oh, no, you can't do that.

Nico Perrino: Next to the church banner on the fence.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, I took them to court, pro se, viewpoint discrimination. When you're pro se, everything is weighted against you.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, they're looking for ways to get rid of your case, and that's one of the reasons that attorneys advise not going pro se, is because you could fumble the procedure.

Chaz Stevens: Everywhere. Also, you have to file your paperwork in person. So, it's a 2 and a half-hour drive to go down to Fort Lauderdale. I live in North Lauderdale, but it's an hour through traffic.

Nico Perrino: Oh, yeah, bad traffic.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah, you know that. So, you got to go in person. You got this, you got that. The system is built against you everywhere you go. Forget the fact that you got to build a good pleading, and you got to do everything else, blah, blah, blah. And they also, Nico, hired a really talented lawyer, really good guy, talented lawyer, Bob Buschel, part of Roger Stone's legal defense firm with the Mueller investigation. One of the reasons I retired, I used to work with Stone as his IT guy doing his websites. So, when he got caught up with all that other shit, I said, “I'm retiring. I don't need to show up in DC.”

Nico Perrino: Roger Stone, also known for being a trickster, self-described.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly right, yeah, yeah, yeah. AI was just... I was dabbling in AI, using it like everybody else does. Ask ChatGPT to do this. Chat, write me a lawsuit. They don't write you a lawsuit. And if you don't know anything about the law, you're not a lawyer, you're not licensed; this is really good. It sucks, because AIs are trained to please you. AIs are trained to say yes. AIs are trained to agree with you.

So, how do you write a lawsuit if you're saying, “I got this greatest idea,” and the AIs come back and say, “Chaz, that's the greatest idea in the world. You're better than Jerry Spence. Holy crap, bro. You're the new Matlock.” I lost the case. Two reasons. One, I survived my first motion to dismiss, which is unbelievably rare as a pro se litigant in federal courts. It's under 10 percent to survive a motion to dismiss. I survived the first motion to dismiss. I lost the second motion to dismiss because they took the flags down.

Nico Perrino: So, the case was mooted?

Chaz Stevens: Mooted, correct. I should have sued them for a dollar, because if I put a buck in the thing –

Nico Perrino: You could recover damages, yeah.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah. It's Uzembe or something or rather. There's a whole SCOTUS case about this, which I learned after the fact.

Nico Perrino: That was a recent SCOTUS case.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They mooted it. I learned that the school board – this is going to freak you out. I learned that the school board superintendent wrote to Liberty Council and said, “We're sorry we took down your sign. That Chaz Stevens is not a good guy. We're going to buy you a new sign, and we're going to give you a year's worth of signposting on the school district's tab.” Holy shit, you're using my tax dollars to fund a sign for a trip? I don't think so.

They changed their ways. I figured out how to use AI. I have seven different AIs all playing messed up 149 degree checkers against each other, adversarial, arguing with each other over my filings. I have one AI is the role of a federal judge. One AI is a defense litigator. One AI is a law clerk. One AI is a law professor. One AI is my mom saying I'm doing the best thing in the world, blah, blah, blah.

Here's something I do. It's called Stan, short for Satan, and they battle it out; and it comes back human in the loop. Read it, and iterate through this. I filed a second federal lawsuit, and I filed other... I'm a little confused now, excuse me. I filed a state lawsuit against emotional support animal letters, these [inaudible – crosstalk] [00:29:37] –

Nico Perrino: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that allow people get their dogs on the plane and whatnot.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I won. I won. A highly resourced, top of the line defense of two of the best law firms in the State of Florida, insurance law firms, Kissane, Scott, & Cole, and then Jimerson Birr. Eight lawyers against Chaz and his laptop. I won. Permanent injunction. State of Florida said, “You did wrong under consumer protection. You did wrong. Chaz is right. You're going to change your ways.” Proved out my tech stack. It's only gotten better. Chip LaMarca, you're obviously familiar with Lindke v. Freed?

Nico Perrino: Mm-hmm.

Chaz Stevens: That was –

Nico Perrino: A case involving a politician who blocked one of their constituents, I believe one of their constituents, on social media, restricted their access, and they were using their social media platform as a place to pronounce on their official duties.

Chaz Stevens: 2022, Donald Trump sued the Knight Foundation, because he blocked the Knight Foundation on Twitter.

Nico Perrino: Yeah, the Knight Foundation sued Donald Trump.

Chaz Stevens: Oh, actually, the other way. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Nico Perrino: And I'm not sure if he blocked the Knight Foundation, but he blocked someone else, and maybe the Knight Foundation represented –

Chaz Stevens: Oh, is that how it was?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, I'm just trying to recall the facts here from memory, but I believe that was the case.

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, it was Trump v. Knight. So, my local elected official blocked me on Twitter in 2021, 2022. So, I said, “I got a case here.” So, I filed in federal court. And this was the pre-Chaz Stan days. I got really sick, deathly sick. My parents died. They were in my care. I nearly died myself. It's a miracle I'm here. But my case lingered, and was dismissed because it was unattended.

In 2024, my life came back, and everything else, so I went, “Oh, I'm going to refresh that case.” So, Lindke v. Freed, Lindke was a constituent in Detroit or Michigan somewhere. Freed was a city manager. City manager blocked Lindke from one social media, and he [inaudible] [00:31:48]. The difference is – and I learned this – is direct versus collective. Freed, like Trump, like DeSantis, like the sheriff from Broward County, they have a direct hand on the lever of power. They can make decisions, and they can change directions by themselves.

Collective, in the case of Chip LaMarca, he's a representative. He's just one vote. So, I sued under the novelty of, “Yeah, but this is the way we've always been doing it,” so forth and so on. The research, the report and recommendation by the magistrate judge, she said, “Because LaMarca was collective, that fails the second [inaudible] of Lindke.

Nico Perrino: I'm not sure... I'm not sure I agree with that, or understand that. I'd have to look at Lindke again, but I think, so long as the government official is speaking as a government official, and they have power, even if it's just one vote, then they can't block any of their constituents. But again, I would have to look at the text again.

Chaz Stevens: That's exactly my point. My argument to the magistrate judge and to Judge Damian, who's fantastic, a district judge in Southern District of Florida, was he blocked me. He didn't block me from posts. He blocked me from an official outlet, where I can no longer get on my soapbox and redress my grievances.

Nico Perrino: Or you can't even see what your representative might be saying that is relevant to you, as your representative. Where does that case end up? I don't want to go too down the rabbit hole on that particular case, but where does it stand now?

Chaz Stevens: I ran out of time. All this is funded out of my pocket, if you will, my time and energy. I ran out of time of... did I want to do this through an appeal? So, I lost. The judge says, “Motion to dismiss. You can refile your motion.” Or do I do something else? So, I let the case just kind of wither and die, with the hopes that someone else will come along and agree with you, which is... it's this collective kind of thing. I teed it up to say, “Is it novel or not?”

And I forget exactly what it was, but there's a thing in Lindke that basically says, “Is this the way we historically do this?” LaMarca would do stuff. He would say, “I'm at my son's T-ball game.” That's personal. He'd also say, “We just voted yes, and I won on the floor here on the legislature, and Rule No. 17 just passed.” That's the mixed use. In Southern District of Florida, they didn't see eye to eye on that one.

Nico Perrino: Yeah. How did you get involved in this sort of activism in the first place? What is your origin story? Because you said, to start, your advocacy wasn't based on any sort of deep commitment to the principle. Some of it was, lack of a better word, trolling, [inaudible – crosstalk] [00:35:06]

Chaz Stevens: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, That is the perfect word. There’s not a better word. That is the word. When I was a young kid, my mama was really into politics, and we would sit around the kitchen table talking about politics. And she would tell the story to her friends how we went voting. I'm a little boy in hand, and I would say to her, “We're not voting for Tricky Dick, Mom. We're not voting for Tricky Dick.” So, politics has been at the forefront of my life. And like I said, my uncles in World War II, they came back broken. And what better way to honor my namesake than to do this? I'm not sure how much time we have left. Do we have enough time?

Nico Perrino: Yeah, we can do one more story there, and then I want to ask you one or two more questions, sure.

Chaz Stevens: So, this, friends, this is breaking news. This is a Consentivist can. I did all this artwork. That's Donald Trump on it, and it says, “The official drink of felonious life choices, consent, America's “Handy” in a can, the best hands, tremendous hands, tiny hands vodka, fresh pedo cola, uncut Russian uric acid, and 14 % pure ecstasy disco biscuits.”

Nico Perrino: So, this is political satire.

Chaz Stevens: Satire at its best.

Nico Perrino: Can you just hold it up stationary for the camera there, for our viewers?

Chaz Stevens: And there's one side. And you can't see it right there. It says, “J. E. Jeffrey Epstein.” We'll talk about it in just a second. And then, on the back. So, I wanted to make a Festivus poll called Consentivist. You asked me early on, am I always by the holidays? Yeah, but you bump into the holidays, and then you irritate the – do you know there's Festivus purists, people that get pissed off at me because I'm smirching the Festivus poll, and then you’ve got to deal with –

Nico Perrino: You're offending everyone, man.

Chaz Stevens: Oh, Jesus Christ.

Nico Perrino: And you're stumbling into it, not knowing who you're going to offend.

Chaz Stevens: Don't be Chaz Stevens. So, listen.

Nico Perrino: Muslims, Festivus purists, Christians.

Chaz Stevens: Originally, I wanted to put it up on Valentine's Day. I wanted to call it Don's VD poll, Valentine's Day Poll. Don's VD Poll, because I'm trolling the living shit out of you, but we missed it. And the State of Georgia said no to me. They took it away. So, then I reached around and I went, “Okay, where else?” I asked Florida, Illinois has a... they love democracy in Illinois. Illinois, their rotunda was under construction. Oklahoma, blah, blah, blah, blah. The great people of Wisconsin, they take democracy really seriously there.

So, I wrote, put this up. On the top of this can, I couldn't bring this up – I wanted to bring this up – is a custom LED heart that says “Don plus Jeff” that lights up. So, it looks like a neon. So, it's 6 feet tall, the heart right about ear level, and I'm going up on the 12th of June in the rotunda at Wisconsin.

They welcomed me with open arms, not a problem at all, didn’t blink of an eye, everything else, yada, yada, yada. My art isn't the can. My art isn't the heart. My art is determining that binary, and filing the complaint. That's the art, and there's an art to it. It's to debug the system and figure out where it is. And then, you get to be the artist, and I'm leaving this with you all here.

Nico Perrino: Thank you.

Chaz Stevens: And if you want to put it on the shelf, I don't have to go back through customs with it.

Nico Perrino: I was going to say, so, Chaz came to us from Florida, and all this stuff was presumably in your suitcase. I don't know if it was in the carry-on.

Chaz Stevens: Backpack.

Nico Perrino: Backpack. So, I don't know if TSA had you open this up –

Chaz Stevens: They went, “What the hell's that?”

Nico Perrino: Trying to figure out what's in that butt plug, what it is. Maybe an abstract pine tree or whatnot. But are you trying to convince people? Because I think you're probably offending a lot of people. Does it matter that you're offending them, or is your goal solely to test the boundaries of the First Amendment, to ensure that government officials uphold and respect those boundaries?

Chaz Stevens: That's an excellent question, and one of the reasons I'm really happy to be here with you is this. My audience isn't the great unwashed masses. I don't care about people. I care about people, but I don't care about people, because they have a vote on Tuesday in November. That's the end of their power, for the most part. The elected officials, the legislators, they're the ones I care about, and the way you reach out to them isn't to wave a sign in the air.

The way you reach out to them is to say, “”My legs audit stuff.” I'm doing governance now, with cities in South Florida where they're bringing me, in stress testing. Barbarians at the gate? No, we're going to bring you behind the gate. So, we're going to learn the Chaz Stevens method to harden our rules.

Nico Perrino: So, it’s white hat hacking for the First Amendment.

Chaz Stevens: Exactly right. Pressure testing. Exactly right.

Nico Perrino: Where can people learn more about what you're doing? Do you have a platform or a website, or something?

Chaz Stevens: Yeah, Chazstevens.substack.com, and there it takes you to all the other kind of stuff, and there it is. And you'll see art. It's a menagerie of art, legal filings, fart jokes, and you name it. It's a chili of fun.

Nico Perrino: All right. Well, I hope people will go out and check out your work. And as you noted, we're recording this. What is the day today?

Chaz Stevens: Today's the 4th, I believe.

Nico Perrino: June 4th, and you have on the 12th your Don Consentivist poll going up at the State House in Wisconsin.

Chaz Stevens: For sale on – if you go to the Substack, you can buy your own Support My Efforts, and I’ll happily send you one. These are signed, of course, for my friends here at FIRE.

Nico Perrino: And we have a gift for you, too, which will give you on the other [inaudible – crosstalk] [00:40:58] Anyone who comes in the studio and records a podcast with us gets either a tie, or a scarf, so.

Chaz Stevens: Excellent.

Nico Perrino: You don't look like a tie guy to me.

Chaz Stevens: No, no, no. I live in Florida.

Nico Perrino: You can hang it on the wall. All right, Chaz. Thanks for coming up to Washington, DC, and having this chat with us today, and thanks for all you do to stress test the First Amendment and ensure that these government officials abide by it.

Chaz Stevens: Thank you, Nico. Thank you very much. I am beyond happy to be here.

Nico Perrino: Happy to have you. I am Nico Perrino, and this podcast is recorded and edited by a rotating roster of my FIRE colleagues, including Bruce Jones, Ronald Baez, Jackson Flegel, and Scott Rogers. The podcast is produced by Emily Beeman. To learn more about So to Speak, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel or Substack page, both of which feature video versions of this conversation. You can also find the video on X by searching for our handle, @freespeechtalk. Feedback can be sent to sotospeak@thefire.org.