In Indiana Family Institute, Inc. v. City of Carmel, (IN App., Sept. 10, 2020), an Indiana state appellate court dismissed a suit brought by two companies offering religion-based education programs against four Indiana cities. Plaintiffs claim that their exclusion of same-sex married couples from their events would subject them to various penalties under the cities' non-discrimination ordinances, and that protections in Indiana's RFRA are not broad enough to cover them. The court however found that the companies face no threat of injury, saying in part:
The Companies do not require event attendees to share the same religious beliefs, and the Companies’ own designated evidence demonstrates that they have permitted “many gay people” to attend their programs....
Although the Companies claim that their rights to hold events in the Cites are chilled because of the ordinances’ failure to exempt their activities from enforcement, none of the Companies have been the subject of a complaint or investigation; nor have they been threatened with sanctions or penalties....
[T]he Companies have failed to show how the ordinances subjected them to an imminent threat of harm or that they faced a credible threat of prosecution.
