New York Times
Supreme Court Rules on Religion in Prison
LINDA GREENHOUSE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON, May 31
BODY:
The Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Tuesday that a new federal law requiring
prison officials to meet inmates' religious needs is a permissible accommodation
of religion that does not violate the separation of church and state.
The court rejected arguments by Ohio officials that the law, the Religious Land
Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, violated the Constitution by elevating
religion above all other reasons a prisoner might seek special privileges.
The state had said that by requiring prison officials to cater to the demands of
adherents of Satanist or white-supremacist religions, the law would result in
attracting new followers to these sects, to the detriment of prison security.
The five Ohio inmates who brought the case belong to nonmainstream religions,
including one, Asatru, that preaches that the white race needs to use violence
and terrorism to prevail over the ''mud races.''
In her opinion for the court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said the state's fears
were unfounded. The Congressional sponsors ''were mindful of the urgency of
discipline, order, safety, and security in penal institutions,'' she said, and
''we do not read'' the law to ''elevate accommodation of religious observances
over an institution's need to maintain order and safety.''
Justice Ginsburg said that under Ohio's constitutional argument, which the
federal appeals court in Cincinnati accepted last year in invalidating the
statute, ''all manner of religious accommodations would fall.'' She noted that
many accommodations have been widely accepted: Ohio itself provides prison
chaplains for ''traditionally recognized'' religions, and Congress has
authorized military personnel to wear yarmulkes and other religious apparel
while in uniform despite a Supreme Court ruling that such an accommodation was
not constitutionally required.
The Supreme Court has had a sometimes troubled history of defining where the two
religion clauses of the First Amendment overlap: the Free Exercise Clause, which
protects religious practice from government interference, and the Establishment
Clause, which in Justice Ginsburg's words ''commands a separation of church and
state.''
From the tone of this latest decision, Cutter v. Wilkinson, No. 03-9877, it
appeared that the court was seeking to defuse the tension inherent in the two
clauses. ''Our decisions recognize that there is room for play in the joints
between the clauses, some space for legislative action neither compelled by the
Free Exercise Clause nor prohibited by the Establishment Clause,'' Justice
Ginsburg said.
The ruling marked the latest chapter in a 15-year dialogue among the court,
Congress and the states over the degree to which the government may take
religious interests into account in law or official policy. The statute in
question, passed in 2000, is a direct outgrowth of that dialogue, which began
with a 1990 Supreme Court case from Oregon, Employment Division v. Smith.
The court ruled in that case, about American Indians' religious use of an
illegal substance, peyote, that the government's refusal to grant religion-based
exemptions to the general application of its laws did not violate the Free
Exercise Clause.
Congress reacted swiftly and, by large margins in both houses, passed the
Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which required the government to accommodate
religious practices unless it had a ''compelling'' reason not to do so.
In 1997, the Supreme Court, taking the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to be
an assault on its institutional prerogatives, declared it unconstitutional on
the ground that Congress lacked authority, at least in the circumstances of that
case, to define the meaning of a constitutional provision and to impose that
meaning on the states. The full impact of that decision, City of Boerne v.
Flores, continues to play out across the court's federalism docket.
The law's supporters regrouped and arrived at a different approach. The
Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act addressed only two types of
government action: zoning and the rights of inmates of prisons, government-run
mental hospitals and other public institutions.
Unlike the original statute, Congress passed the new law under its power to
control spending and to attach strings to the receipt of federal funds; any
state or local government that accepted federal dollars for land development or
prisons had to agree to apply the ''compelling interest'' standard for any
policy that interfered with religious practice.
Whether this was an appropriate use of the Congressional spending power remains
unresolved. Neither the lower court nor Justice Ginsburg addressed that
question, but Justice Clarence Thomas, in a concurring opinion, suggested that a
state that accepted the federal money might have waived its objection. ''The
states' voluntary acceptance of Congress' condition undercuts Ohio's argument
that Congress is encroaching on its turf,'' he said.
It remains open to Ohio to return to the lower courts and argue that the law
violates either Congress's spending authority or its power to regulate
interstate commerce. The section of the law dealing with land use was not before
the Supreme Court in this case. Cases challenging that section, which usually
arise when a church seeks an exception from zoning laws, are making their way
through the lower courts.
The case the court decided Tuesday began before passage of the new law. The Ohio
inmates complained that officials were withholding religious publications and
items, denying them access to religious services, and generally discriminating
against them as compared with prisoners who belonged to mainstream religions.
When the new law took effect, the inmates, represented by a clinical legal
program at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, invoked it in
amended complaints. Ohio argued that the law was unconstitutional, and the
federal government intervened to defend it. The case never went to trial. The
federal district court refused to dismiss the lawsuit, but the United States
Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that the law violated the
Establishment Clause ''by giving greater protection to religious rights than to
other constitutionally protected rights.''
In her opinion, Justice Ginsburg emphasized that the court was only evaluating
the law ''on its face.'' Particular arguments, including the state's assertion
that the law would foment gang activity, are to be evaluated as cases arise, she
said. She added: ''It bears repetition, however, that prison security is a
compelling state interest, and that deference is due to institutional officials'
expertise in this area.''
For purposes of this preliminary ruling, she said, the law ''fits within the
corridor between the Religion Clauses: on its face, the act qualifies as a
permissible legislative accommodation of religion that is not barred by the
Establishment Clause.''
In another action on Tuesday, the court agreed to review the constitutionality
of the Kansas death penalty law.
The Kansas Supreme Court declared the law unconstitutional in a 4-to-3 decision
six months ago, on the ground that it impermissibly made a death sentence
automatic unless the sentencing jury found mitigating circumstances to outweigh
any aggravating circumstances. Under what was known as an ''equipoise
provision,'' if the two categories were equal in the jury's mind, the law
provided that ''the defendant shall be sentenced to death.''
The state court's ruling caused an uproar in Kansas and led the state Senate to
pass a resolution asking the United States Supreme Court to overturn the
decision. The state's appeal, Kansas v. Marsh, No. 04-1170, said that death
penalty laws in Arizona and Idaho were also at stake.
URL: http://www.nytimes.com
CORRECTION-DATE: June 4, 2005
CORRECTION:
An article on Wednesday about a Supreme Court decision upholding a law that
requires prison officials to accommodate the religious needs of inmates included
an incomplete description of the Asatru religion practiced by some inmates in
the case. Based on the brief the Ohio attorney general submitted to the court,
the article characterized Asatru as advocating violence by the white race
against the ''mud races.'' But other Asatru followers say that the use that some
violent and white-supremacist prisoners make of the religion is a perversion of
its peaceful and nonracist beliefs.