Republican Idaho Attorney General Raúl Labrador prevailed as a federal District Court judge dismissed a challenge to his state’s pro-life law brought by The Satanic Temple.
The Satanic group’s suit against Labrador claimed the law violated its “right” to practice ritualistic abortions for so-called “religious” purposes.
KBOI reported that the “Defense of Life Act was enacted in Idaho to protect the unborn after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade” and “The Satanic Temple sued the Attorney General and the Ada County prosecutor after the law went into effect.”
District Court Chief Judge David C. Nye on Thursday dismissed the case with prejudice, meaning that the Satanist group cannot bring the case in the district court another time.
The Act has made almost all abortions in the state illegal.
“Yesterday, the Attorney General’s office successfully defeated The Satanic Temple’s challenge to Idaho’s Defense of Life Act,” wrote Labrador’s office in a Friday press release titled “Attorney General Labrador Defeats Satan.”
“The Satanic Temple claimed a constitutionally protected right for its female members to ceremonially abort their babies as part of a Satanic ritual that involves the eerie invocation: ‘By my body, my blood, by my will, it is done,’” the release continued.
It went on to call the decisive ruling “a resounding defeat for the Satanists.”
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“The district court rejected every claim The Satanic Temple asserted and dismissed the case with prejudice,” Labrador stated via the release.
“The court held that each claim lacked merit, even describing one of The Satanic Temple’s positions as producing a ‘blatantly absurd’ result,” he added.
Labrador emphasized that his office “will continue to defend the lives of the unborn at every turn.”
A lawyer for the Satanic organization said that it will appeal the case to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which has a reputation for being among the most liberal appeals courts in the country.
The attorney characterized abortion as “a fundamental Constitutional right.”
As CatholicVote previously reported, The Satanic Temple once described itself as “a non-theistic religion that views Satan as a literary figure who represents a metaphorical construct of rejecting tyranny and championing the human mind and spirit.”
Labrador is a former four-term member of the U.S. House, representing Idaho’s First Congressional District from 2011 to 2019. He was elected Idaho’s Attorney General in 2022 after defeating a 20-year incumbent in the Republican primary.
LifeNews Note: Joshua Mercer writes for CatholicVote, where this column originally appeared.
