Republicans on an Idaho House panel have once against agreed to introduce anti-sharia legislation designed to prevent Idaho courts from making decisions based on Islamic or other foreign legal codes.

Spokesman This is the third year in a row Rep. Eric Redman, a Republican from Athol, has backed legislation that says courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals can’t base rulings on any foreign law or legal system that would not grant the parties the same rights guaranteed by state and U.S. constitutions; the bill has never passed.

The proposal doesn’t specifically mention Sharia law, but Redman previously included pictures of severed hands (applicable punishment for thieves under sharia) and a public beheading (sharia punishment for a variety of reasons) in between definitions of Sharia law in his materials about the bill. There are no known cases in which an Idaho judge has based a ruling on Islamic law. The House State Affairs Committee agreed Thursday to introduce the bill.

Sharia in American Courts: The Expanding Incursion of Islamic Law in the U.S. Legal System But there have been several examples in many other states where a judge has considered sharia law in ruling on a case involving Muslims.. There have been documented 146 cases in 32 states in which a party to litigation attempted to have the matter resolved by applying sharia, rather than the statutes of the state in question.

The bill follows model legislation developed by the American Public Policy Alliance, a nonprofit that warns of foreign laws infiltrating the U.S. court system and has gotten similar laws passed in several states. A 2010 Oklahoma constitutional amendment forbidding that state’s courts from considering Sharia law in decisions was overturned in federal court in 2013.

MagicValley “It is imperative that we safeguard our Constitution’s fundamentals,” said bill sponsor Rep. Eric Redman, R-Athol