The U.S. Supreme Court recently rejected a lawsuit from The Satanic Temple attacking pro-life laws in Missouri.
The announcement was released by the Supreme Court late last month, refusing to grant certiorari, meaning there weren’t enough justices on the Supreme Court who felt the case merited a review of previous court rulings. The Satanic Temple first filed a lawsuit attempting to overturn Missouri’s 72-hour waiting period law in 2018, which was dismissed by the Eighth Circuit Court. Another lawsuit was filed in 2019 on similar grounds, on behalf of an anonymous woman, “Judy Doe,” claiming the laws violated TST’s religious freedom. Doe and TST claimed Missouri’s laws were “forcing Plaintiff to act and forgo acting in a manner that violates her belief in The Satanic Tenets as a condition for getting an abortion in Missouri.”
The Satanic Temple has begun calling abortion a “religious rite” in recent years, seemingly in an attempt to skirt pro-life laws like the one in Missouri. The Temple’s abortion “ritual” consists of making affirmations in front of a mirror before and after the procedure.
In September The Satanic Temple sued Lamar Advertising after the media company rejected pro-abortion billboards that the group wanted to place near pregnancy resource centers in Arkansas and Indiana.
The billboards claimed The Satanic Temple’s “religious abortion ritual averts many state restrictions” on abortion.
So far The Satanic Temple has not been successful at convincing federal courts that abortion is a religious ritual. That bodes well for the lawsuit against Lamar over the billboards in Arkansas.
