JOHN FERNANDEZ, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

A santeria church lost its two-year battle with Hialeah officials Thursday after a federal judge ruled that city ordinances prohibiting the ritual slaughter of animals are constitutional.

In his ruling, U.S. District Judge Eugene Spellman also concluded that city officials did not discriminate against the church's controversial practice of sacrificing animals when they passed the ordinances in September 1987.

"The ordinances are not targeted at the practitioners of santeria but are meant to prohibit all animal sacrifice, whether it be practiced by an individual or a religion or a cult," the judge wrote.
The Constitution protects only the santeria religion's beliefs, not its practices, the judge ruled.

The city laws were enacted after Ernesto Pichardo, a santeria priest, announced he would open a church in which ritual sacrifices of chickens, goats and other animals would be performed under tenets of the Afro-Cuban religion. Pichardo, who opened the Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye in April 1988 at a Hialeah storefront, sued the city seeking to overturn the ordinances. The church has not engaged in sacrifices pending the lawsuit's outcome.

An indignant Pichardo said he will continue to perform animal sacrifices privately despite Thursday's ruling. But he said he will keep his church open strictly for meetings.

"No one is going to tell me that I can't worship my god the way I do," Pichardo said.

Pichardo's attorney, Jorge Duarte, who was assisted by lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union in the August trial, said he was shocked by the ruling and likely will appeal.

Robyn Blumner, head of the ACLU in Florida, said santeria beliefs and practices cannot be separated. "We have today seen that a community can bar certain religions because they find their orthodoxies distasteful," she said. "I'm very, very happy," Hialeah Mayor Raul Martinez said. "We've been saying all along that what we did was proper and constitutional. We did not intend to regulate churches or people's beliefs."

Attorneys for the city claimed that the ordinances were passed for public safety, health and morals.

During the trial, a U.S. Humane Society official testified that he had inspected several Miami public parks and found dozens of carcasses linked to santeria sacrifices strewn behind bushes and hanging from tree branches. That testimony refuted claims in court by Pichardo that santeria practitioners carefully discard animal remains.