Written by Don Byrd
Last week, the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals sided with a Muslim inmate in his lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice over its ban on beards. Willie Garner argued the state could demonstrate the rule is the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling interest, as required by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The court agreed.
The question here is one RLUIPA was specifically designed to address. Everyone agreed that the ban is a substantial burden on Mr. Garner’s religious exercise, because his Muslim faith requires him to grow a beard. When can a prison ban it anyway?
The TCDJ argued it had 2 good reasons that should qualify under RLUIPA: 1) the increased cost of allowing quarter-inch beard growth and 2) the increased difficulty in identifying prisoners.The court addressed each (pdf).
TDCJ has presented testimony only that its costs would increase. It has not attempted to approximate the amount of those costs, and it has not presented any concrete evidence concerning how other operations of the prison system would be affected by these increased costs. Such speculative testimony cannot satisfy TDCJ’s burden.
…
Although TDCJ has presented evidence that allowing inmates to have beards hinders inmate identification, there was undisputed evidence that TDCJ allows inmates to shave their heads, and there was testimony that shaved heads pose just as many identification problems as allowing prisoners to grow and shave beards… We also find it persuasive that prison systems that are comparable in size to Texas’s–California and the Federal Bureau of Prisons–allow their inmates to grow beards, and there is no evidence of any specific incidents affecting prison safety in those systems due to beards.
