Posted: 6/03/05
Court upholds law allowing
inmates religious freedom
By Robert Marus
ABP Washington Bureau
WASHINGTON (ABP)—A unanimous Supreme Court upheld a federal law that makes it easier for prison inmates—and others—to assert their religious freedom.
The justices validated the constitutionality of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The law was passed by Congress and signed by then-President Bill Clinton in 2000. It was designed to make it harder for government entities to curtail significantly a group’s or individual’s religious rights.
One section of the law requires states to accommodate religious practices by inmates in their prisons—such as providing a special diet or allowing them to wear a particular kind of religious dress—unless prison officials can show a compelling reason not to grant such requests. If the officials can provide such a justification, they must then also show they have burdened the inmate’s religious exercise in the least restrictive manner possible.
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, authoring the court’s opinion, said the relevant section of the statute “does not, on its face, exceed the limits of permissible government accommodation of religious practices.”
At stake was whether Congress can pass laws creating special protections for religious practices among institutionalized persons. But the court’s decision also had the potential to extend far beyond prison walls—to any laws making it easier for individuals or organizations to practice their faith.
The case, Cutter vs. Wilkinson, involved several current and former inmates of Ohio prisons who sued the state to gain accommodations for their various non-mainstream religious practices. They included practitioners of Satanism, the Wicca religion and a white-supremacist form of Christianity.
Although the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act passed with support from a broad spectrum of political and religious leaders, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 2003 used the lawsuit to overturn the section of the law that relates to prisoners.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court said the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act’s Section 3 violates the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which prevents Congress from establishing a religion or giving any religion a legal preference. By specifically accommodating religious rights, the appeals court said, the act advances religion in general and gives religious prisoners preference over non-religious prisoners.
Its primary effect “is not simply to accommodate the exercise of religion by individual prisoners but to advance religion generally by giving religious prisoners rights superior to those of nonreligious prisoners,” wrote Judge Ronald Gilman in the court’s opinion.
But other federal appeals courts have upheld the law’s constitutionality. The Supreme Court’s decision settles the question in their favor, reversing the 6th Circuit.
The court found the act’s institutionalized-persons provision “compatible with the establishment clause because it alleviates exceptional government-created burdens on private religious exercise,” Ginsburg wrote.
Attorneys for the state of Ohio argued that the law could effectively encourage inmates to “get religion” by offering them “benefits” that were not available to non-religious prisoners. But the Supreme Court dismissed that argument. Ginsburg noted Ohio already provides accommodations to Christian, Jewish and other prisoners who practice mainstream religions.
The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act “presents no such defect,” she wrote. “It confers no privileged status on any particular religious sect, and singles out no bona fide faith for disadvantageous treatment.”
The justices also rejected Ohio’s argument that the burdens the law imposed on corrections officials would create problems in the unique prison environment.
In the court’s opintion, the act does not “elevate accommodation of religious observances over an institution’s need to maintain order and safety,” Ginsburg wrote, noting that both the law’s legislative history and previous court precedent on similar cases suggest courts should generally defer to the judgment of prison officials when such questions arise. “Our decisions indicate that an accommodation [of religion] must be measured so that it does not override other significant [state] interests.”
Ginsburg also said the court would have to endanger many other government allowances for religious freedom if it were to uphold the 6th Circuit’s reasoning in the case. “Were the Court of Appeals’ view the correct reading of our decisions, all manner of religious accommodations would fall,” she wrote. For example, she said, “Congressional permission for members of the military to wear religious apparel while in uniform would fail, as would accommodations Ohio itself makes.”
Ohio Solicitor General Douglas Cole, who argued the state’s case before the Supreme Court in March, said the decision was a “mixed bag,” but that he was encouraged by parts of it.
“We are, of course, disappointed that the court reversed the 6th Circuit, but at the same time we are encouraged that the court recognized that there are some very serious safety concerns at issue, so courts will have to defer,” he said.
“All along, from our perspective, this has been all about prisoner safety. We believe that prison officials can and should and do accommodate all legitimate religious requests, but our concern was when the statute seemed to force them to change the balance they strike between safety and accommodation.”
A broad array of religious and civil-rights groups had backed the inmates’ case, including the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty.
“Where government acts to lift a substantial government-imposed burden on religion, it allows religion to flourish,” BJC General Counsel Holly Hollman said. “The decision properly protects the religious rights of people who depend on the government for the permission and accommodation to practice their religion.”
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