Satanic Temple blocked from suing over Idaho abortion ban

Hillel Aron

(CN) — Satan may be the "ruler of this world," according to John 12:31, but his followers still can't sue to overturn Idaho's abortion ban, after a Ninth Circuit panel ruled Monday that the Satanic Temple lacks standing to challenge the law.

The temple runs a telehealth abortion clinic in New Mexico known as "Samuel Alito's Mom's Satanic Abortion Clinic," which provides abortion pills, like mifepristone, over the mail.

But U.S. Circuit Judge Margaret McKeown, a Bill Clinton appointee, wrote for the three-judge panel that the temple "has no patients in Idaho, no clinic in Idaho, no doctors who are licensed to treat Idaho patients, and has identified no Idaho citizen who seeks an abortion from the organization," and therefore lacks standing to sue.

The temple — a secular humanist movement founded to oppose the "intrusion of Christian values on American politics" — had argued that the organization had diverted resources to open its New Mexico clinic in response to abortion bans in states like Idaho and Texas but the panel determined that wasn't enough to establish standing.

Instead of identifying anyone from Idaho who had tried to get an abortion, the temple submitted two declarations that cited the probability that a member of the temple living in Idaho would need an abortion. One gynecological osteopath predicted that 27 Satanic Temple members in Idaho "are Involuntarily Pregnant Women during the course of a year.”

But the panel concluded that that analysis was "too attenuated and speculative to confer standing."

In an email, Satanic Temple co-founder Lucien Greaves called it a "cowardly ruling."

"The Ninth Circuit decided to hide behind a misuse of technicality to avoid the core question of law, which is on our side," Greaves said. "Now they demand that in order for us to get them to do their job, we must put one of our members through the inconvenience, and potential danger, of acting as a plaintiff when the state's abortion restrictions inevitably conflict with our beliefs in bodily autonomy."

The panel also included U.S. Circuit Judges Ronald Gould, a Bill Clinton appointee, and John Owens, a Barack Obama appointee.

Founded in 2013 and headquartered in Salem, Massachusetts, the Satanic Temple is classified as a nonprofit religious group. It claims to have more than 1.5 million members worldwide, including more than 3,500 in Idaho.

The temple claims to venerate — but not worship — an allegorical Satan, like the one that appears John Milton's "Paradise Lost," who defends personal sovereignty and opposes religious authority.

The Satanic Temple is often confused with the Church of Satan, founded by occultist Anton LaVey in the 1960s. Greaves has described the Temple as far more progressive than the Church of Satan, as well as more organized.

Idaho's abortion ban was passed as a "trigger law" in 2020, which went into effect two years later after the U.S. Supreme Court issued its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, which overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022.

The law makes it a felony to perform or attempt to perform an abortion, punishable by up to five years in prison. It it includes some narrow exceptions for the health of the mother, rape and incest, as long as the abortions are performed within the pregnancy's first trimester.

Under the Biden administration, the Justice Department had sued to block the Idaho abortion ban, but in March, the Trump administration dropped the suit.