Muscatine County has agreed to pay $85,000 to settle claims that it discriminated against a former jail administrator due to his anti-Muslim and anti-gay writings.
The settlement agreement calls for the county to pay Dean Naylor, former jail administrator and captain with the sheriff’s department, $37,500 that will be treated as taxable wages and earnings, plus $37,500 as compensation for claims of emotional distress.
In addition, the county has agreed to pay Naylor’s attorneys at the Pacific Justice Institute $10,000.
In April 2020, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported that Naylor had published online a lengthy treatise in which he called Muslims “pawns of the devil.”
The story noted that Naylor had also created and posted seven related YouTube videos.
In his written treatise, Naylor described “the gay lifestyle” as an abomination and denounced court rulings that led to the removal of the Ten Commandments from courthouses and government buildings.
Naylor was fired three weeks after the Capital Dispatch story was published.
In June 2022, he sued the county for employment discrimination and the deprivation of his civil rights, alleging that when the county fired him, it violated his First Amendment rights related to religious expression, free speech and — in light of his use of social media to voice his beliefs — freedom of the press.
