The City of Chicago has been dragging its heels for three years to make a decision on whether to allow the Satanic Temple to perform invocations at city council meetings. Now the Temple is suing the City for violating its first amendment rights.
From Reason:
"By excluding Plaintiffs Vavrick and The Satanic Temple from providing an invocation before the City Council, while opening this forum to clergy from other faiths, Defendant violates the First Amendment's establishment clause," the lawsuit claims, adding that "the lack of any policy setting standards and criteria for selection of clergy members to provide an invocation before City Council violates the First Amendment because it vests unbridled discretion with the City Clerk, creating an unreasonable risk of arbitrary and discriminatory decision-making."
While it's possible that other factors, like simple incompetence, could have contributed to Chicago's failure to schedule a Satanic Temple invocation, discrimination against the Temple is clearly prohibited by the First Amendment. Even if Chicago may not like it, Satanists—and clergy from any other disfavored faith—have an equal right to give invocations before the City Council.
The Satanic Temple is a nontheistic religion that follows seven tenets, such as "The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one's own."
