First Amendment scholar David Hudson profiles a recent ruling in Virginia that allowed an inmate's lawsuit to proceed thanks to the scrutiny standard of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).
The law prohibits prisons from imposing substantial burdens on inmates’ religious liberties unless officials can demonstrate a compelling interest in their regulation, carried out in the least-restrictive way possible. In other words, RLUIPA incorporates the strict-scrutiny standard — the most rigorous form of judicial review.
It appears that [Plaintiff] Lord Versatile knew that his best chance of success was filing a statutory claim under RLUIPA rather than a constitutional claim under the free-exercise clause of the First Amendment. Under the free-exercise clause, prison officials do not have to meet strict scrutiny, but must show that their regulation of inmate religious liberty is justifiable because the restrictions are reasonably related to legitimate penological concerns, such as security and rehabilitation.
Here, Judge Richard Williams ruled that prison officials had not presented evidence showing that a ban on certain inmate religious publications has ever led to the kind of security dangers they fear, or that a general ban is the "least restrictive" method to address their concerns, had they been properly demonstrated. It's not too much to ask prison officials to meet these standards before curtailing inmates' religious activity in the name of security and order. With RLUIPA approaching its 10th anniversary, that responsibility should be well known!
