WASHINGTON (ABP) — The Supreme Court will consider for the first time the constitutionality of a law intended to protect the religious freedom of prison inmates.
The justices agreed Oct. 12 to hear arguments in Cutter vs. Wilkinson, which involves a group of Ohio prisoners who sued the state to gain accommodations for their various religious practices under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, commonly referred to as RLUIPA.
The 2000 law requires states receiving federal funds to accommodate religious practices by inmates in their prisons — such as providing a special diet or allowing the wearing of a particular kind of religious dress — unless prison officials can show a compelling reason why they should not grant such requests.
It passed with support from a broad spectrum of political and religious leaders, evidenced by the fact that its two main Senate co-sponsors were conservative Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and liberal Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.).
But in late 2003, the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals used the lawsuit — which included practitioners of Satanism, the Wicca religion and an adherent of a white supremacist form of Christianity — to overturn RLUIPA.
A three-judge panel of the appeals court said that the law violates the First Amendment because it advances religion and prefers religion over non-religion. “[T]he primary effect of RLUIPA 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 an attorney for a Washington-based group that advocates for religious freedom said the statute simply provides for prisoners' religious freedom.
“A broad coalition supported the passage of that legislation and will likely support the constitutionality of that statute,” said Holly Hollman, general counsel for the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty. “Prisoners, by definition, are dependent on legislative accommodations for their free exercise of religion. Prisoners have very few rights, but the courts have long recognized that they have some rights to religious liberty.”
-30-