The devil you say: Judge orders Satanic group to pay Boston more than $8,000 for the time city lawyers spent fighting an attempt to drag Michelle Wu up to Salem on Election Day

A federal magistrate judge ruled today the Satanic Temple has to pay Boston $8228.25 as reimbursement for the time four city attorneys spent successfully fighting what another judge called a "bad faith" attempt to make then Councilor Michelle Wu spend several hours in Salem on Election Day listening to church members give a candle-lit invocation and then answering questions about how the city council selects clergy members to start meetings with an invocation.

The Satanic Temple had sued the Boston City Council in January, 2021 on First Amendment grounds, alleging its refusal to let the group give one of these invocations in favor of mainly Christian clergy showed unconstitutional favoritism towards Christians.

In a separate ruling, US District Court Magistrate Judge M. Page Kelley rejected request by a lawyer for the group to sanction Boston city attorneys over their handling of pre-trial interviews - and warned that the temple lawyer should stop risking some judicial sanctions of his own by continuing to violate basic court rules, this time over the requirement to confer with opposing lawyers before asking a judge for something drastic, such as sanctions. "Plaintiff is cautioned that in the future he may be subject to sanctions for violations of the rule," US District Court Angel Kelley wrote.

In the fees ruling, Kelley concluded the temple owed the city money for fending off the Wu deposition demand.

Kelley said the group was actually getting a bargain, because the city based its amount on the assumption its four lawyers' work should be reimbursed at $265 an hour, or what Kelley called "a strikingly low rate for legal work in the city of Boston."

She said she fully agreed with an earlier ruling by US District Court Judge Angel Kelley that the group be forced to pay up for the time because its attempt to make Wu, out of all the city councilors, appear at temple headquarters on the day she was up for election as mayor, constituted "impermissible antics and abusive tactics."

Well after the election, Wu's opponent, then City Councilor Annissa Essaibi George, did travel up to Salem and sat for a deposition - after watching church members give their candle-lit invocation. The temple also "deposed" city employees with knowledge of how the council selected invocation givers.

However, M. Page Kelley did reduce the city's bill by $106 because the city's bill did not adequately account for roughly 24 minutes of lawyers' time.

This is not the first time Satanic attorney Matt Kezhaya and federal judges have crossed legal swords.

In September, Kezhaya threatened to seek to have Wu arrested and charged that Angel Kelley, who is handling the main part of the case, and city officials were engaged in a corrupt conspiracy, although he later said he was just joshing, at least about the conspiracy, and it's not his fault the Boston city lawyer to him he made the comments couldn't take a lawyerly joke.

Still, Kezhaya demanded Angel Kelley recuse herself from the case, a demand Kelley rejected.

In September, she warned Kezhaya that he needs to pay attention to basic court rules. That warning came in a ruling in which she rejected another attempt by Kezhaya to make Wu go to Salem, and in which she wrote that the way to try to get Wu in for questioning is to file a motion for reconsideration of the earlier denial, not issuing a deposition subpoena and "status reports" claiming the judge did not earlier rule the way she in fact ruled.