Written by Don ByrdA federal judge in Nebraska has dismissed a prisoner’s claim that officials violated his free exercise rights under the First Amendment and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). RLUIPA protects inmates against government imposition of unnecessary substantial burdens on the exercise of their sincerely held religious beliefs. The court in this case, however, determined that the plaintiff’s proclaimed adherence to the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSMism) does not qualify as a religion, and that accordingly his beliefs are not “sincerely held religious beliefs” protected by the law.
Here is an excerpt from the court’s ruling:
This is not a question of theology: it is a matter of basic reading comprehension. The FSM Gospel is plainly a work of satire, meant to entertain while making a pointed political statement. To read it as religious doctrine would be little different from grounding a “religious exercise” on any other work of fiction. A prisoner could just as easily read the works of Vonnegut or Heinlein and claim it as his holy book, and demand accommodation of Bokononism or the Church of All Worlds. Of course, there are those who contend — and Cavanaugh is probably among them — that the Bible or the Koran are just as fictional as those books. It is not always an easy line to draw. But there must be a line beyond which a practice is not “religious”simply because a plaintiff labels it as such. The Court concludes that FSMism is on the far side of that line. Because FSMism is not a “religion” for RLUIPA purposes, Cavanaugh has failed to allege a “religious exercise” was burdened.
The judge appropriately emphasized that the validity of the plaintiff’s beliefs is not in question. But he ruled that because the complaint “contains very little detail on FSMism or its purported requirements,” and because the plaintiff “has not alleged anything about what it is that he actually believes,” apart from identifying the “FSM Gospel,” the court was left only to “read the book.”
According to the court’s reading of the FSM Gospel, FSMism is a satire that makes important and substantial statements about religion and about public policy, but is not itself a religion.
