Andrew Bailey (R) has told Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas (D) to turn over all documents, records, and communications relating to his office's X (formerly Twitter) post retaliating against Kansas City Chief's kicker Harrison Butker for his free expression of Christian faith in his recent commencement speech at Benedictine College.
The problematic post revealed Butker's residence.
The May 16 letter to Mayor Lucas points out, among other things, that Missouri's Human Rights Act prohibits government actors from discriminating against citizens because of their sincerely held religious beliefs.
"Missourians deserve better from our elected officials," Bailey states.
If he does not get the requested information, then his office will file a lawsuit.
"We are going to continue to pursue this matter and ensure that local government is not being weaponized to target Christians, bully them out of the free expression of their sincerely held religious views," Bailey tells AFN.
This is an issue the attorney general believes everyone should pay attention to, regardless of whether they agree with Butker's pro-Christian, pro-family, pro-life speech in which the kicker talked about traditional marriage and male and female roles.
If the government is allowed to frown on or act against someone for that, Bailey warns that it will.
"Remember, the rights in the Bill of Rights come from God, not man, and our right to free expression and free exercise of our religion comes from God and is protected by the Constitution," he notes. "It is intended to protect us from the government, not to allow the government to weaponize the instrumentalities of government to suppress the free expression of religion."
Meanwhile, he says he has seen "an outpouring of support" for his defense of Missourians' rights.
"I'm also really proud to say that several Chiefs players, to include defensive tackle Chris Jones and the owner's wife, have stood up and said that Harrison Butker is free to say and believe as he pleases, and we should support that kind of diversity of viewpoint and certainly traditionally held Christian beliefs that have been dominate in this culture for decades, until recently," the attorney general relays.
Since Butker's speech, two online petitions respectively calling for his firing and simply voicing support have been started. As of Wednesday morning, more than 20,000 people had signed the latter. The petition demanding the Chiefs dismiss Butker for his "discriminatory remarks" had over 223,000.
