In Satanic Temple, Inc. v. Rokita, (6th Cir., Jan. 6, 2026), the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals held that The Satanic Temple lacks standing to bring suit claiming that Indiana's ban on telehealth prescribing of abortion medications violates Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The Satanic Temple's beliefs are described by the court:
Members of the Satanic Temple adhere to Seven Tenets.... Tenet III establishes the belief that one’s body is inviolable and subject to one’s own will alone. Another, Tenet V, establishes that individual beliefs should conform to an individual’s “best scientific understanding of the world” and that each person “should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s own belief.” The Satanic Temple says these Tenets support what it calls the “Satanic Abortion Ritual,” a meditative ritual intended to “cast off notions of guilt, shame, and mental discomfort that a patient may be experiencing due to choosing to have a medically safe and legal abortion.”...
The court concluded that The Satanic Temple had not show any injury in fact to it or any of its members, saying in part:
Instead of identifying an individual member who has suffered an injury, the Satanic Temple relies on statistical probability to show it has some unnamed members who might be injured....
... [W]e are left with a simple estimate of women who may be involuntarily pregnant, and there is no evidence that any one of them would want to obtain an abortion. Simply put, missing here is evidence that any member of the Satanic Temple has “personally … suffered some actual or threatened injury.”...
As a backstop argument, the Satanic Temple claims “Indiana[’s] Abortion Ban” has caused all of its members to “suffer the stigma of being evil people because they do not believe a human being comes into existence at conception nor do they believe abortion is homicide.” ... But, other than merely saying so, the Satanic Temple provides no evidence that its members have actually suffered stigmatic injury. ...
The Satanic Temple argues the threat of prosecution ... “if” it prescribes abortifacients via telehealth appointments in Indiana is enough to show an injury to support its pre-enforcement challenge. There is no evidence, however, that the Satanic Temple will knowingly or intentionally prescribe abortifacients in violation of § 16-34-2-1 to face the prospect of prosecution. Indeed, it has not provided affidavits, declarations, or other evidence describing any specific, concrete plans of doing so.
Catholic Vote reports on the decision.