In March 2021, The Satanic Temple and one of its members filed suit in a Texas federal district court challenging Texas' requirement that a woman have a sonogram prior to an abortion. The complaint alleged that in light of the Satanic Temple's Satanic Abortion Ritual, the Texas requirement violated plaintiffs' free exercise, substantive due process and equal protection rights. (See prior posting.) After the U.S. Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, The Satanic Temple filed a Third Amended Complaint. In The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Young, (SD TX, July 3, 2023), the Texas district court then dismissed the suit for lack of standing and on sovereign immunity grounds. The court added:
Without any supporting detail, Plaintiffs assert two causes of action under the First Amendment, one being a claim swirling together the Free Speech and Free Exercise Clauses, and the other pertaining to the Establishment Clause. Young argues that these claims are so inadequately pleaded as to deprive her of fair notice as to what exactly this suit is about in the wake of Dobbs....
The court also refused to grant plaintiffs leave to replead their claims. In doing so, the court set out an unusually strong criticism of the performance of plaintiffs' counsel, saying in part:
Given the detail of the prior complaints and these substantial changes in the law, the deficiencies in the operative complaint are no doubt intentional. And indeed, the filing of a willfully deficient amended complaint is of a piece with the mulish litigation conduct by counsel for Plaintiffs, Attorney Matt Kezhaya, in this and other actions representing The Satanic Temple. Recently considered in this regard was whether to revoke his permission to proceed pro hac vice in light of sanctions entered against him in other federal courts after his appearance here. For example, [in one of those cases:]
He ... filed a second motion for TRO containing negligible legal analysis, with six pages of the main analysis dedicated to presentation of what’s purported to be a five-act play.....
Litigation of constitutional claims is a serious matter. Such issues deserve serious attention from counsel desiring to be taken seriously. As it turns out, Plaintiffs might have been better served by proceeding pro se, as applicable standards would dictate that their filings would be “liberally construed” and “held to less stringent standards than formal pleadings drafted by lawyers.”...
And any repleading at this stage would manifest undue prejudice to a range of current and former Defendants who still have little clue as to the exact nature of the claims brought in this case. The Court is also of the firm belief that any further attempt at repleading would be futile, given that Attorney Kezhaya’s filings become more conclusory, reductive, and intemperate over time, in line with his performative and obstinate conduct to date.
