The Satanic Temple plans to appeal a federal court decision that allows the Boston City Council to exclude Satanists from delivering an opening prayer at meetings, saying that the judge who issued the ruling “never hid her bias.”

Malcolm Jarry, co-founder of the Salem-based Satanic Temple, said U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley demonstrated “dangerous and corrupt” disregard for the First Amendment when she chose to dismiss the group’s lawsuit against the city.

“Boston has been engaging in blatant discrimination, which they even admitted,” Jarry wrote in a Wednesday email to the Herald. “However, during the entire proceedings, U.S. District Court Judge Angel Kelley never hid her bias.”

He added, “Twice she vacated the City of Boston’s defaults. She also interfered with our discovery process by not letting us depose Michelle Wu, who was president of the Boston City Council when we applied to deliver an invocation.”

The Satanic Temple filed suit against the City of Boston in January 2021, asserting that the Council violated both the U.S. and state constitutions when it failed to allow the group to open one of its weekly meetings with a prayer.

The basis of the temple’s argument is that it’s a violation of the First Amendment for councilors to pick and choose who gets to deliver an invocation, particularly when the opportunity is afforded to various other mainstream religions.

“TST is damaged because the city grants invitations to ‘preferred’ religions, but refuses to invite TST because of its ‘undesirable’ status,” the group argued in its lawsuit. “The rest are left in the cold.”

Kelley disagreed with this assertion, writing in her Monday decision that the City Council did not discriminate against The Satanic Temple when it chose not to grant its request to deliver an opening prayer.

“Invocation speakers are invited at the discretion of the individual city councilors,” Kelley wrote, adding that the councilors’ primary motivation in selecting these speakers “has always been the individual or organization’s involvement in the community.”

While the judge raised concerns about this selection process, she found that the “city councilors’ discretion was not exercised in such a way that individuals or groups were excluded from giving an invocation because of their religious beliefs.”

Jarry said The Satanic Temple will be appealing the decision.

“The Boston City Council does not take requests for delivering invocations,” Jarry said. “They decide who can and cannot speak, which, of course, is the definition of discrimination. For a while they were paying the speakers and some of those speakers were campaign donors.”