Inmates in Tennessee's Sumner County jail do not have a right to wear religious head coverings, according to a judge's ruling yesterday. Strong protections for religious liberty in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act are apparently trumped by the safety concerns testified to by the jail officials.
“The First Amendment does not require that general prison officials provide inmates with the best possible means of exercising their religious beliefs nor does it require that general prison policies and concerns become subordinate to the religious desires of any particular inmate,” [Magistrate Judge Juliet] Griffin wrote.
Griffin, who noted that [plaintiff Horatio] Burford was allowed to have a Koran and a prayer rug and to exercise his religion in other ways, said any religious infringement caused by not allowing him to wear a kufi was “valid and constitutional.”
The article notes that the case law cited by Judge Griffin all predates the 2000 RLUIPA law.
