Senate Says Yes To Making Anti-Terrorist Penalties 1st-Amendment-Proof

(Source: MIRS.news, Published 03/19/2026) The Senate passed SB 502 on Thursday, aimed at ensuring the $20,000, 20-year felony for making threats under Michigan's anti-terrorism law can withstand arguments that it might violate First Amendment rights.

SB 502 by Sen. Sue Shink (D-Dexter) was approved unanimously in the chamber.

In 2023, Trenton police arrested Michael Joseph Kvasnicka – a 23-year-old from Grosse Ile – after he messaged a young girl on TikTok that she was "not gonna be laughing once I come to your school and shoot it up or blow it up like (C)olumbine,'" under the username "MishaLikesColumbine."

He was arraigned in September of that year, with his jail bond set at $300,000. However, he argued that Michigan's statute regarding threats of terrorism was "facially unconstitutional" because it did not require proof that he had some subjective understanding of his statement's threatening nature or that he was acting recklessly while making it.

Originally, in February 2025, the Michigan Court of Appeals had upended the 2002 statute, with a three-judge panel siding it was "facially unconstitutional." Although the ruling was later reversed after the Michigan Supreme Court vacated it, the Court of Appeals did recommend that legislators make amendments, which Shink's SB 502 seeks to do.

Shink said she worked closely with Attorney General Dana Nessel and her staff to ensure the bill addressed the needs of the Court of Appeals' opinion, "basically that there is knowledge of an awareness on the part of the person who's making the terroristic threats that it would be interpreted as terror."

Specifically, SB 502 adds that penalties would apply to someone knowing that their communication would be perceived as threatening violence. It would define "reckless disregard" as consciously disregarding a "substantial and unjustifiable risk that a communication will be viewed as threatening violence."

Nessel pushed for the passage of SB 502 on Monday, responding to the March 12 incident of a man ramming his truck into Oakland County's Temple Israel, one of the largest Reform synagogues globally.

Sen. Jeremy Moss (D-Bloomfield Twp.), the sole Jewish legislator in the state Senate, noted the bill's extra meaning following the incident at Temple Israel in Bloomfield Hills.

He described the country's Jewish community as experiencing an agonizing time since the attack on Temple Israel, the 2023 Hamas-led attacks on Israel during the Simchat Torah festivities and the summer 2016 new-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"Antisemitic conspiracy theories are vast, come from every direction on both political extremes and are incredibly dangerous, more than just normal hate and bigotry," Moss said on the Senate floor Wednesday. "Antisemitism breeds violent attacks, as evidenced on Thursday in West Bloomfield."

He said that his community's security systems work, but the reality is that they're in place because such an attack was predicted.

However, he also noted Wednesday that anyone in the Legislature who previously did not vote on reforms to Michigan's hate crime penalties or the creation of the "Red Flag" petition process to have someone's firearms temporarily confiscated, "you have a second chance to help us to strengthen the law. We must seize this opportunity to snuff out this untenable hatred in this country."

Shink said that SB 502 receiving a unanimous vote in the Senate sends a strong message that it's not a partisan issue, and that the people of Michigan are against terror.

As for other Senate news, the chamber aloso passed Sen. Roger Hauck (R-Union Twp.)'s SB 272 , allowing condo developers who built from 2001 to 2016 to have plots of land set aside for folks to purchase and build on without legal challenges from other residents.

SB 272 passed 34-1, and Shink opposed it.

Also, the Senate passed Sen. John Cherry (D-Flint)'s SB 770 , adopting a stricter “Grade 'A' Pasteurized Milk Ordinance” established during the President Joe Biden administration, for the interstate transportation of milk after the heating pasteurization process.

Sens. Joseph Bellino Jr. (R-Monroe), Michele Hoitenga (R-Manton), Ruth Johnson (R-Holly), Jonathan Lindsey (R-Coldwater), Ed McBroom (R-Waucedah Twp.) and Jim Runestad (R-White Lake) voted against it.

McBroom, a dairy farmer, said a few years ago, a federal body decided to eliminate a certain type of hinge from all the equipment in milk houses, called a "piano hinge." Although they're a bad idea for milk-contact surfaces, they're a "perfectly reasonable part of the equipment" for water or never-wet surfaces.

He described being told to have all farmers agree in a co-op to protest the elimination in front of the interstate shippers conference.

"Well, by that time, the whole conference is over, and it's too late to do anything, and so this is really the government and a bunch of business enterprises gilding the lily constantly on what dairy farmers have to do out in the countryside," McBroom said. "It's a bad process, and it needs to be reformed, and until then I'm going to continue to vote no on just rubber-stamping these regulations."