The Satanic Temple has vowed to file a lawsuit, alleging discrimination by a Pennsylvania school board that recently rejected a proposal to form an extracurricular club around the demonic figure of Satan. A group that uses tongue-in-cheek supernatural worship to argue for civil rights and the constitutional separation of church and state, the Satanic Temple has long used their ‘After School Satan Clubs’ to promote “free inquiry and rationalism” in schools, as their website states, often as an alternative to evangelical organizations that run faith groups after school hours. However, the Northern York School Board’s near-unanimous April 19 vote to block a request from a local mother, according to WHIO-TV, to institute a chapter of the club at Northern High School has ruffled the temple’s feathers. Matthew Kezhaya, an attorney for the temple, told WHP-TV that the denial of the club proposal’s is a violation of the First Amendment. But, as one Catholic protester outside the school on Monday told WHTM: “They promote things that are diametrically opposed to the values that America stands for, and at this level, Satan has no rights in America.”
