Government · Statewide · IN · September 9, 2026
Indiana Supreme Court to Hear Bid to Use Religious Liberty Against Abortion Ban
What Alinsky tactic is being used
3 of the thirteen rules are in play here — campaigns rarely run just one.
Rule 4
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.”
The whole case runs on Indiana's own Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the 2015 law that religious conservatives fought to pass; the ACLU is now using its "substantial burden / compelling interest / least restrictive means" test to carve an exemption out of Senate Enrolled Act 1. Marion County Judge Christina Klineman's March 5, 2026 permanent injunction rests on the state failing to carry the burden that RFRA itself imposes on government. That is rule 4 exactly: the book of rules being turned back on the people who wrote it.
Counter-Rule 4 · Radical Integrity
Close the gap between stated values and actual practice before anyone else finds it. This tactic only works where the gap is real.
Read the actual RFRA text and the Court of Appeals opinion (22A-PL-02938, April 4, 2024) before speaking about it, so you can say precisely what the statute protects and where a compelling-interest defense should have been made. Then apply the standard consistently in your own church's speech: if you would invoke RFRA for a bakery or a hospital, say plainly why protecting unborn life is a compelling interest that survives the same test. Closing that gap out loud is more persuasive than complaining the law was misused.
Rule 3
“Whenever possible, go outside the expertise of the enemy.”
The fight has been moved onto ground almost no lay pro-life advocate is fluent in: associational standing for Hoosier Jews for Choice, class certification of everyone with similar beliefs, interlocutory appeal, a 72-page appellate opinion, denial of transfer in December 2024, then direct transfer to the Supreme Court bypassing the Court of Appeals. Arguments about the morality of abortion do not reach any of that. The decisive questions on September 10, 2026 will be doctrinal and procedural.
Counter-Rule 3 · Preparation and Width
Prepare the unfamiliar ground before you are dragged onto it. "I don't know, I'll find out and come back" beats an improvised answer.
Prepare that ground now rather than at the meeting: read the April 4, 2024 opinion and the Thomas More Society amicus filed for Voices for Life on June 3, 2026, and write down in one page the three RFRA elements and how each side answers them. When someone asks a procedural question you cannot answer — what class was certified, what the injunction actually forbids — say "I don't know, I'll find out," then pull the docket and come back with the document.
Rule 10
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.”
This litigation has run since 2022 through a preliminary injunction, an interlocutory appeal, a denied transfer, a remand, a permanent injunction, and now a second trip to the state's highest court with expedited briefing closing July 9 and argument September 10, 2026. Attrition is the method: each stage outlasts the attention span of everyone but the parties, and the injunction stays in force the whole time.
Counter-Rule 10 · The Long Game
Plan in decades against a campaign built on attrition. Succession and endurance beat any single victory.
Plan on the same timescale rather than on the news cycle. Put September 10, 2026 in your church's calendar now, name one person in your congregation to check the Indiana appellate docket monthly and report in three sentences, and agree in advance that whichever way the ruling goes, the group keeps meeting afterward. A named successor for that task matters more than any single reaction to the decision.
Chapter 3 sets out the rules; Chapter 15 answers each of them in turn. This is that pairing applied to this story.
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