Brief of Amici Curiae Free Exercise Scholars in Individual Members of the Medical Licensing Board of Indiana v. Anonymous
This amicus curiae brief was filed 12 June 2024 in the Indiana Supreme Court on behalf of Professors Caroline Corbin, B. Jessie Hill, Elizabeth Sepper, Richard Schragger, Micah Schwartzman, and Nelson Tebbe, arguing that a straightforward application of Indiana’s Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence requires that the state grant religious exceptions to the state’s abortion ban so long as it permits comparable secular exemptions. Indiana has adopted a series of comparable secular exceptions to its law banning abortion, including an exception for destroying embryos generated through the process of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Under current legal doctrine, therefore, the state must also provide a religious exception. That it has not done so constitutes religious discrimination and devaluation in violation of Indiana’s RFRA. The Indiana Supreme Court should therefore affirm the decision of the Indiana Court of Appeals.