ConsciencE CLAUSE: Supreme Court Unanimously Upholds Federal Religious Liberty Law In Ohio Prison Case

Church & State, Jul/Aug 2005 by Leaming, Jeremy

When Mitzi Hamilton, a low-level offender, entered Virginia corrections officials' custody in 2003 she made what she thought was a simple request - a kosher diet to adhere to the dictates of her Jewish faith.

Hamilton, 36, was sentenced to fiveand-a-half years behind bars for fraud and forgery and, like many of her fellow inmates, was relying on her religious beliefs to help during incarceration. She quickly discovered, however, that inmates from minority faiths face serious obstacles. Virginia correctional officials responded to her request for a kosher diet by assigning her to a maximum-security prison in Troy, the only women's facility Io offer meals intended to satisfy Jewish inmates' requests.

Thus, in order to observe the tenets of her faith, Hamilton would have to do hard time with other prisoners identified as violent and dangerous. Hamilton's attorney Richard McKewen told Church & State that she and other Jewish prisoners have also had problems trying to gain access to a rabbi and permission to observe rituals of their religion.

Now, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court, Hamilton and inmates like her have more legal clout for their religious liberty claims. In May, the justices unanimously upheld a federal law guaranteeing prisoners the right to ask for reasonable religious accommodations. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), the court said, does not violate the First Amendment and must be obeyed.

Enacted during the Clinton presidency, RLUIPA requires state-run institutions such as prisons and mental institutions to alleviate substantial burdens that they place on the free exercise of inmates and patients. Government officials may restrict religious observance only if they can prove that such restrictions further "a compelling governmental interest" and do so by "the least restrictive means."

Some state correctional officials, however, have resisted the strictures of RLUIPA, and a number of conflicts have wound up in the federal courts. In one of those lawsuits, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with Ohio correctional officials that RLUIPA violates the separation of church and state because it favors religious freedom over other fundamental rights.

In its May 31 Cutter v. Wilkinson decision, however, the Supreme Court concluded that the federal law does not "exceed the limits of permissible government accommodation of religious practices."

In a tightly crafted opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg found that section 3 of RLUlPA does not subvert the First Amendment "because it alleviates exceptional government-created burdens on private religious exercise."

But Ginsburg made clear that the federal law does not "elevate accommodation of religious observances over" prison security needs. Indeed, Ginsberg noted that federal court precedent shows that "an accommodation must be measured so that it does not override other significant interests."

Ginsburg also suggested that RLUIPA's protection for prisoners' religious liberties would not be an impediment to maintaining the safety and security of other inmates.

"We have no cause to believe," she wrote, "that RLUIPA would not be applied in an appropriately balanced way, with particular sensitivity to security concerns."

In conclusion, Ginsburg added, "Should inmate requests for religious accommodations become excessive, impose unjustified burdens on other institutionalized persons, or jeopardize the effective functioning of an institution, the facility would be free to resist the imposition."

The Cutter case evolved from a number of religious liberty lawsuits lodged against the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction in the late 1990s. One inmate, a member of Asatru, a preChristian religion that reveres the Norse gods, was being represented by Ohio State University Law School's Clinical Programs. David Goldberger, an OSU law professor and staff attorney in the school's Clinical Programs, told Church & Slate that he became involved in the case in late 1999.

After RLUIPA was passed in 2000, Goldberger and the Clinical Programs students amended their Ohio prisoner's complaint to include a claim that prison officials had violated the new federal statute. At the time, Goldberger said he had heard of the other prisoner lawsuits on religious liberty grounds and wanted to consolidate them into one action to show the "breadth of the problem" for minority religions.

A U.S. district judge agreed, and the lawsuit soon included an inmate trying to practice Wicca, a pre-Christian religion focusing on nature, a Satanist and an inmate belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, which calls for racial separation. The prisoners' combined legal effort argued that Ohio corrections officials had blocked them from practicing their religious beliefs in a number of ways, including denial of requests for literature and other accoutrements needed for their religious practices.

"The case was taken as pro bono," Goldberger said, "providing students a rich educational experience. Over the years, there have been a slew of students working on this case."