The Satanic Temple Wins Historic Ten Commandments Lawsuit in Arkansas

In a 148 page ruling issued late 31 March 2026, Chief United States District Judge Kristine G. Baker ruled in favor of plaintiffs’ motions for summary judgement in the matter of Cave et al v. Jester, colloquially known as “the Baphomet Case” in Arkansas. The Satanic Temple enjoined its case with First Amendment Establishment Clause claims filed by the American Humanist Association, the Freedom from Religion Foundation, and the Arkansas Society of Freethinkers. In short, Arkansas had erected a 10 Commandments monument, privately donated to the state, on its capitol grounds in Little Rock, prompting The Satanic Temple to offer a private donation of their Baphomet monument to likewise be displayed at the capitol, arguing that the Arkansas government is legally bound to act neutrally in regard to religious viewpoint. If Arkansas was to accept a 10 Commandments monument, they were obligated to accept the Baphomet. Arkansas denied the Baphomet monument, and a long legal battle ensued. The Court finds that

“TST was prevented from competing with Christianity on an equal footing for placement of its Baphomet monument on State Capitol grounds” and rules that “[Arkansas Secretary of State] Jester, in his official capacity as Arkansas Secretary of State, together with his agents, servants, and employees, and all those persons in active concert or participation with him must remove immediately from the State Capitol grounds the Ten Commandments Monument mandated by the Display Act, Arkansas Code Annotated § 22-3-221. The Court specifically stays execution of this portion of the injunction requiring the removal of the Ten Commandments Monument pending the final disposition of any timely appeal to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals or until the time for filing a notice of appeal expires. Signed by Chief Judge Kristine G. Baker on 3/31/2026. (cmn)”

The long road to victory began eight years ago, and our Baphomet monument has since become a prevalent popular culture symbol of Satanism, not only for practitioners of the religion, but for artists, news outlets, conspiracy theorists, and even a conspiracy theory-based dictatorship fighting a non-existent war against an imaginary Satanist insurrection (Russia). The monument’s image has appeared in debates about Church/State separation, in international news, graphic novels, music videos, television shows, and bootleg merchandise, becoming an entrenched symbol of the ongoing conflict between theocratic domination and pluralistic liberal democracy.

As protestors marched the streets during 2020, and Confederate monuments fell (accompanied by insensible razings, such as that of a bronze Abraham Lincoln in Portland), popular right-wing memes would juxtapose images of demolished public statues alongside an image of the Baphomet with a message along the lines of, If they can destroy these historic memorials we should be able to destroy this. Fortunately—and despite the fact that we are not at all secretive about the fact that the Baphomet monument resides within our headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts—the low-quality minds propagating this call to destruction were erroneously convinced that Baphomet sat in some public area in Detroit or Little Rock, drawing on memories of our 2015 Unveiling ceremony in Detroit, and the subsequent rally in Little Rock in which we hauled Baphomet to the state capitol to call for government viewpoint neutrality against a wave of theocratic assaults against the right of Freedom From Religion.

The Baphomet monument is a counter-balance against exclusive religious representation; not simply a symbol of freedom of thought, freedom of conscience, and religious liberty, but an exercise of those values. A permanent counterforce against an imposed unipolar order, placed on public capitol grounds where theocrats have attempted to claim sole rights to expression.

Oklahoma

It started with Oklahoma. The Satanic Temple was founded, in part, upon the mission to resist tyranny and defend pluralism. Even before The Satanic Temple was officially a legal entity, we sent a letter to Oklahoma offering to donate a Satanic monument to their capitol grounds in recognition of the fact that their recent acceptance of a privately donated 10 Commandments monument opened those grounds as a public forum. Oklahoma ignored us. The media did not.

Our letter captured the imagination of no insignificant population, and I soon found myself arguing our case on multiple outlets. We had no idea how much a monument would cost, or even what the design of our monument would be, but we knew that the attention would be fleeting, so we took advantage of the ability to fundraise for the project’s cost with a crowd-sourcing campaign for $20k. This turned out to be laughably insufficient, given the ultimate overall cost, but we had no estimate at the time and felt it would be at least as bad to over-fundraise than to come up short.

Meanwhile, Oklahoma seemed to be experiencing a low-scale Satanic Panic in response to our request. I was asked to comment on fresh claims of cattle mutilation and animal sacrifice. A man intentionally crashed his car into the Oklahoma 10 Commandments, and politicians immediately took that as an opportunity to blame Satanists. The man was schizophrenic and would later appear in court wearing a t-shirt quoting Ephesians 6:11: “Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand firm against all strategies of the devil.” He claimed that the Devil had made him do it, but he was clear that he was a God-fearing Christian who felt that a 10 Commandments display imposed by the state was idolatry. No matter. It was convenient to attempt to blame us. This was the beginning of what has turned into a rich history of politicians lying about us or attempting to use our name to their advantage, such as when Florida governor Ron DeSantis, when campaigning for the primaries against Donald Trump, claimed that a DeSantis administration would not have allowed the IRS to confer The Satanic Temple with tax exemption, as the IRS had done during Trump’s first term (independent of Executive approval, and as a matter of procedure. We simply fit the qualifications). The same man who destroyed the Decalogue in Oklahoma would later run over the 10 Commandments monument in Arkansas, but in that case, he wrote a manifesto for the press that prevented anybody from mistaking him for anything other than a crazed Christian.

While this was all happening, we had settled on the design for the monument and immediately began its construction with sculpture artist Mark Porter out of New York. Baphomet had already long been recognized as a Satanic symbol, and its composition of binary contrasting elements spoke to the concept of the reconciliation of opposites that we felt beautifully underscored our philosophy of pluralism.

After about a year of multiple arguments and artistic revisions, Baphomet was ready to be unveiled. The primary design controversy involved Baphomet’s breasts. The original Baphomet drawing, a 19th century sketch by an occult historian named Eliphas Levi, depicted Baphomet with breasts in binary opposition to the inclusion of the caduceus on the lap that is meant to symbolize male generative force. I originally wanted our Baphomet to have breasts, but we realized that if the breasts were exposed, Oklahoma would surely take that as an opportunity to assert “obscenity” to avoid questions of religious liberty. I felt we could get away with placing robes on Baphomet, but artistically, it looked horrible. Ultimately, we went with the male chest. I am proud of this decision because I am convinced it was the strategic choice, and far from being a compromise, I think it indicates our dedication, first and foremost, to doing all we can to win the battles that we fight. It indicates our priorities, and our priorities are to tangible goods and not dogmatic fealty to symbolic goods.

Unveiling, Detroit

With the monument fully constructed, it was time for the largest known Satanic gathering the world had yet seen to reveal what we knew would soon become a widely-recognized popular icon. We had already had successful events in Detroit and, I assumed, there was not likely to be a whole lot of resistance to our holding a private, ticketed event there to celebrate Baphomet’s introduction into the world. I was wrong.

A Detroit pastor, looking to raise his profile for a prospective mayoral run, immediately mobilized against us. Things turned threatening fast as the pastor made videos decrying the threat we posed, using blood-splattered graphics to emphasize implied violence. Rallies were organized against us, and every venue we tried to book received multiple threats. The first venue we signed a contract with pulled out and lied to the press, claiming they did not know who they had rented their space to. I felt compelled to publicly post the contract, upon which it clearly stated “The Satanic Temple.” Subsequent venues agreed to host us even while aware of the controversy in advance, only to pull out once getting a taste of the magnitude of the hysteria. I believe it was less than 48 hours before the event that we secured the final warehouse venue, from which it was necessary for us to work full-time removing debris, trash, and even excrement, while also constructing an ad hoc stage, lighting, etc.

This was a religious event, and if we were to allow all the media that were clamoring to be there to attend, it would have simply been a cheap spectacle in front of a mob of cameras. We allowed exclusive access to Lisa Ling for CNN, and even greatly limited the space where we agreed they could use cameras. Otherwise, cameras were not allowed. We wanted the event to be in the moment, to be lived by those in attendance.

For security purposes, all ticket holders received an email on the day of the event telling them where to show up. This turned out not to be the event location, but a first security checkpoint. There is not much utility in this, as one might leave the first checkpoint and go pick up a bomb or weapon before reaching the actual venue, but there was another complicating factor we introduced to mitigate the attendance of theistic terrorists: we made everybody sign a contract agreeing to give their souls away to the Devil. It did not matter that we ourselves do not believe in souls or pacts with Satan, only they needed to. It seemed to work. There were no problems at the venue, though eventually protestors did find the venue in time to mount a feeble rally outside.

We had intended to announce during the unveiling event that we would be filing a lawsuit the next day against Oklahoma for their failure to respond to our request. Shortly before the unveiling event, however, the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that the 10 Commandments monument needed to come down. Shortly thereafter, Glenn Beck took to the air to openly weep over the perceived injustice of Baphomet’s unveiling in Detroit at a time in which “God’s word” was being taken from Oklahoma.

Arkansas

Immediately, we moved our Baphomet campaign to Arkansas. Arkansas had passed the same bill that cleverly tried to evade an Establishment Clause issue in erecting a 10 Commandments monument by allowing for privately-donated religious monuments. Unlike Oklahoma, Arkansas did reply. They said no. More specifically, they claimed we needed the sponsorship of an Arkansas politician who would be willing to pen a bill calling for the placement of our monument before we could do so. We do not believe this is a legally valid process, as it still allows the government to dictate religious expression, but in order to build an iron-clad case to show that we did all we could under the rules they were making up, we tried. We emailed AR representatives and told them what we were doing. Some of them replied openly confessing to religious animus. Their case did not look good. The senator who sponsored the bill to erect the 10 Commandments monument (incidentally, the same senator who donated the monument to the capitol grounds) was publicly celebrating “bringing the Gospel to the public square,” openly contradicting the legal argument from the bill claiming that the 10 Commandments served a secular function, informative of “heritage and history.”

We held a rally in Arkansas, at the capitol, where we brought the Baphomet monument and parked it in front of the capitol building for a day where we set up a podium and delivered speeches about the importance of religious liberty and pluralistic diversity to an assembled audience. This served as the climactic scene of the film ‘Hail Satan?’

Walking toward the capitol building for that event, flanked by security, people recognized me and some lifted their shirts just to show me the guns in their waistbands, in an attempt at intimidation. One of the speakers was rushed by a man with a spear.

Before I addressed the audience in general, I could not help but address some KKK protesters waving Confederate flags. I pointed out the irony of mentally-impared flabby old men fashioning themselves to be representative of a “master race.” This did not make anybody happy, as the targets of my criticism were insulted, while from the other side I was accused of “body shaming.”

The fact that we had the rally in Arkansas at all brought up an interesting question that further complicated Arkansas’s rejection of the Baphomet monument, however: the state was arguing that they were not legally empowered to stop our rally from happening at the capitol. On what grounds could they argue that they were nonetheless legally empowered to reject our private donation in what they had turned into a public forum. Their case seemed to fall apart on every analysis.

8 years later the case has, astonishingly, been ruled correctly, and it will have reverberations far and wide, validating the fundamental strength of our arguments and mission.