In Individual Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana v. Anonymous Plaintiff 1, (IN App., April 4, 2024), an Indiana state appellate court held that plaintiffs are entitled to a preliminary injunction in their suit claiming that the state's Religious Freedom Restoration Act is violated when they are prohibited by Indiana's abortion law from obtaining an abortion that their religious beliefs direct them to obtain. However, the court found that the injunction entered by the trial court was broader than just protecting plaintiffs' religious rights and sent the case back for the trial court to tailor its injunction more narrowly. The court said in part:
The State has provided little authority—and none that we find persuasive—to support the more restrictive view that religious exercise does not encompass the pregnancy terminations at issue here.... If a corporation can engage in a religious exercise by refusing to provide abortifacients—contraceptives that essentially abort a pregnancy after fertilization—it stands to reason that a pregnant person can engage in a religious exercise by pursuing an abortion....
... [W]e need look no further than the language of the Abortion Law to determine that the General Assembly does not view the State’s compelling interest as beginning at fertilization. The Abortion Law exempts in vitro fertilization procedures from its scope, although 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. Beyond that, the Abortion Law expressly permits abortions at all stages of gestation provided certain express requirements are met.... The Abortion Law allows a conditional right to abortions “to prevent any serious health risk to the pregnant woman or to save the pregnant woman’s life.” ... This amounts to an exception to the Abortion Law’s prohibitions based on a prioritization of the pregnant woman’s health over the survival of the zygote, embryo, or fetus. But that is the same sort of prioritization reflected in the Plaintiffs’ religious beliefs, albeit on a different scale....
Thus, the broader religious exemption that Plaintiffs effectively seek has the same foundation as the narrower exceptions already existing in the Abortion Law: all are based on the interests of the mother outweighing the interests of the zygote, embryo, or fetus. The religious exemption that Plaintiffs seek, based on their sincere religious beliefs, merely expands the circumstances in which the pregnant woman’s health dictates an abortion....
The State asserts the injunction is so broad that it enjoins future government action that may not violate RFRA.... Plaintiffs’ response is that the preliminary injunction should be interpreted more narrowly because Plaintiffs never sought such broad relief.
Judge May concurred without a separate opinion and Judge Bailey filed a concurring opinion. Indiana Capital Chronicle reports on the decision. [Thanks to Thomas Rutledge for the lead.]
