BOISE, Idaho – In 2022, The Satanic Temple filed a federal lawsuit against Idaho’s abortion-restriction law, the Defense of Life Act, arguing that requiring women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term constitutes slavery under the thirteenth amendment.
Today, Idaho Attorney General Raul Labrador announced that the lawsuit was dismissed for lack of standing. The Ninth Court of Appeals affirmed the lack of standing because The Satanic Temple was not able to prove that any of their Idaho members were affected by Idaho’s law and so had no grounds for opposing it.
The Satanic Temple is a recognized religious association that has over 1.5 million members worldwide and 3,500 members in Idaho, according to their complaint made in court documents. They also claim to venerate, but not worship, the allegorical Satan from the epic poem, Paradise Lost, as a defender of personal sovereignty.
In their lawsuit, they focused on the rights of “Involuntarily Pregnant Women,” a group they classify as women who become pregnant without consent due to failure of her birth control.
The Satanic Temple argued that Idaho’s Defense of Life Act, which makes most cases of abortion crime, violates several constitutional rights of “Involuntarily Pregnant Women.”
They cited the clause of the fifth amendment which says, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation,” and argued that Idaho’s law “created a taking of the economic value of a woman’s uterus by forcing women to carry unwanted pregnancies without state compensation.”
They cited the thirteenth amendment, which was passed after the American Civil War and says, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States,” and argued that Idaho’s law “subjected women forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to slavery.”
Finally, they cited the equal protection clause of the fourteenth amendment, which says that no state shall make any law which shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” amd argued that Idaho’s law gave “unconstitutional preferences to survivors of rape or incest, who are excepted from Idaho’s abortion prohibitions.”
Judge Margaret McKeown, who wrote the opinion for the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, did not address any of these arguments. Instead, she simply wrote that The Satanic Temple failed to demonstrate that the law had any effect on its members.
“TST’s concern for its members is evident—but it still bears the burden to demonstrate an injury in fact,” she wrote.
She mentioned that The Satanic Temple failed to bring any member testimony or instances where a member of the group had their rights violated in any of the ways they said would happen.
The Satanic Temple used a statistic in their complaint, arguing that they could estimate that twenty-seven members might become “involuntarily pregnant.”
However, Judge McKeown said that the study was too speculative and that there was not enough evidence that members of The Satanic Temple were facing violations of rights because of the Idaho Law.
One change Judge McKeown made to the previous ruling was to dismiss the case “without prejudice”, instead of “with prejudice.” This means that The Satanic Court would be able to bring their lawsuit back to court if they decide to amend their case.
“I will always defend Idaho’s laws that protect families and preserve the sanctity of life,” wrote Attorney General Labrador in a press release on the lawsuit’s dismissal affirmation. “The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals correctly found that the plaintiff lacked standing to challenge Idaho’s laws protecting mothers and their unborn children. This victory ensures that Idaho may continue to enforce our pro-life and pro-family protections.”
