A Texas city has won the first round in what may be an extended legal battle over whether its ban on animal slaughter violates the First Amendment rights of a Santeria priest who practices the ritual sacrifice of goats.

The city of Euless has made it unlawful “to slaughter or to maintain any property for the purpose of slaughtering any animal in the city.” In 1993, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a similar law, finding the city of Hialeah, Fla., had discriminated against a Santeria church. Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993).

Jose Merced relied heavily on Lukumi in his challenge to the Euless law. He sued the city for injunctive relief after an animal control officer told him he could not sacrifice a goat in his home.

But after a bench trial of the case in March, U.S. District Judge John McBryde entered judgment for the city of Euless, which had argued that Lukumi was distinguishable because, unlike Hialeah, it did not have any intent to discriminate against Santeria and its practitioners.

The Supreme Court “concluded that the only object of the Hialeah ordinances was to prevent the Santerias from conducting animal sacrifice,” the city said in a trial brief. “Nothing could be further from the truth in Euless.”

Merced has filed an appeal with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He contends that the discriminatory effect of the ordinance makes it unconstitutional.

“The fact of discriminatory effect, not the Defendant's intent to discriminate, entitles the Plaintiff to the injunction he seeks,” Merced argued in court papers.

Religious freedom cases have been particularly divisive at the Supreme Court lately. Lukumi generated a majority opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy and three concurrences -– with only Justice John Paul Stevens joining Kennedy in his discussion of the intent behind Hialeah's ban on animal sacrifice.

“[T]he ordinances had as their object the suppression of religion,” Kennedy concluded.

Justice Antonin Scalia took a different approach -– one that supports Merced. “The First Amendment does not refer to the purposes for which legislators enact laws, but to the effects of the laws enacted,” he said in his concurrence, and the court should not be “in the business of invalidating laws by reason of the evil motives of their authors.”

The Becket Fund, a public law interest firm which specializes in religious freedom cases, is representing Merced. “The issue of Santeria and animal sacrifice has already been decided by the United States Supreme Court,” legal counsel Lori Windham said, referring to Lukumi.

But Merced's case suggests the Supremes have left ample room for disagreement in the lower courts.