Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act - Prisoners

Prisoners

In the 2005 case of Cutter v. Wilkinson, five prisoners in Ohio – including a Wiccan, a Satanist, and a member of a racist Christian sect – successfully sought to apply the protections of the act to their religious practices. The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had held that RLUIPA violated the Establishment Clause by impermissibly advancing religion by bestowing benefits to religious prisoners that were unavailable to non-religious prisoners.

The U.S. Supreme Court disagreed, unanimously holding that RLUIPA was a permissible accommodation of religion justified by the fact that the government itself had severely burdened the prisoners' religious rights through the act of incarceration. A concurring opinion by Justice Thomas noted that the states could escape the restrictions of RLUIPA simply by refusing federal funds for state prisons.

Cutter v. Wilkinson only concerns the prisoner portion of RLUIPA. The court explicitly declined to extend the rule to land use cases.

In a unanimous opinion issued March 15, 2011, that reverses the three-judge panel's May 2010 ruling, the entire U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals held that an Orange County courthouse lockup is an "institution" under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, meaning a Muslim woman who sued after being forced to remove her headscarf in front of strange men is entitled to the act's protections. The case is Khatib v. County of Orange, 08-56423. The lawsuit started as a result of court bailiffs ordering the woman to remove her headscarf while she was temporarily being held inside the courthouse lock up while a county court judge was deciding whether or not to revoke her misdemeanor probation (she was released that same day after the judge decided not to). The District Court had dismissed the case, with said dismissal being upheld by the three-judge appellate panel. The case has now been reversed and sent back to the trial court for further proceedings. It is the first time that a temporary holding facility (like a courthouse lock up) has been deemed to be an "institution" under the Act. The law, passed by Congress in 2000, prohibits the government from imposing a "substantial burden" on prisoners' religious practices unless officials can show a compelling need for the restrictions. The Obama administration joined Khatib in arguing that the law applied to courthouse holding cells.