In Anonymous Plaintiff 1 v. Individual Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana, (Super. Ct., March 5, 2026), an Indiana state trial court, invoking Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act, issued a permanent injunction barring enforcement of Indiana's abortion ban against individuals whose religious exercise would be substantially burdened by the ban. A state appellate court had already decided that plaintiffs were entitled to a preliminary injunction. (See prior posting.) In granting the permanent injunction, the trial court said in part:
The Abortion Law would allow a plaintiff to seek an abortion if her pregnancy were the result of rape, but not if it were mandated by her religious beliefs. The State has not justified this differential treatment by establishing that its interest in the same prenatal life changes based upon the reason for terminating a pregnancy. The fact that the Abortion Law expressly allows for abortion in other circumstances, in at least one circumstance at any gestational age, demonstrates the lack of a compelling interest in “protecting life” under all circumstances and from fertilization. Id.
Moreover, “the [Indiana] General Assembly has declined to explicitly define human beings to include zygotes, embryos, or all fetuses.” Id. (code citations omitted). The Abortion Law specifically exempts from its coverage in vitro fertilization procedures—a process that results in post-fertilization embryos, even though “there is the potential for life that might be destroyed in the process of this procedure.” ... “That broad exemption suggests any compelling interest by the State is absent at fertilization.” Id.
The State has not satisfied its burden under RFRA to demonstrate a compelling governmental interest in enforcing the Abortion Law against sincere religious practice, either in general or as to the plaintiffs.
... The State may prefer the statute’s existing “secular” exceptions to religious ones, but it cannot escape the fact that the law is underinclusive.... Given that the statute is underinclusive, the State bears the burden of “adequately explain[ing] its differential treatment.” Id. It has not.
The court would suggest that the State has already found ways to accommodate competing interests by putting parameters on the exceptions. There is no reason that the same accommodations could not be made with the conflict with RFRA. An outright ban is simply not the least-restrictive mean.
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