Christian Attorney Hails SCOTUS Decision Upholding Prisoners' Religious Freedom

by Mary Rettig and Jenni Parker
June 1, 2005

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(AgapePress) - A senior trial attorney with the American Family Association's Center for Law & Policy is among a number of religious freedom defenders applauding a Tuesday U.S. Supreme Court decision. In that unanimous ruling, the court upheld the constitutionality of a federal law requiring prisons to accommodate inmates' religious beliefs.

The case of Cutter v. Wilkinson involved two Ohio prison inmates -- a witch and a Satanist -- who claimed they were improperly denied access to religious literature and other ceremonial religious items. Previously, the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had struck down part of a 2000 law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) on the grounds that it violated the separation of church and state.

Speaking for the high court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg disagreed with the lower court, stating that the 2000 law "confers no privileged status on any particular religious sect, and singles out no bona fide faith for disadvantaged treatment." She went on to say that the high court justices do not read the law as elevating the accommodation of prisoner's religious beliefs over the penal institution's ability to maintain order and safety. However, Justice Ginsburg added, "We have no cause to believe [RLUIPA] would not be applied in an appropriately balanced way, without sensitivity to security concerns."

Attorney Brian Fahling of the AFA Center for Law & Policy says he is pleased with the Supreme Court's decision to uphold prisoners' religious freedom rights. Still, he feels the Cutter ruling is not without some irony and describes it as possibly a "sign of the times" that the faith-friendly precedent was secured as it was.

Brian Fahling

"This decision will obviously benefit Christians as well," Fahling notes, "but the oddity about this, again, is the fact that we have religious freedom being protected through the agency of a Satanist and a witch." Still, the important thing, he emphasizes, is that the court's decision addresses both religious liberty concerns and prison security concerns.

Under the terms of the ruling, Fahling notes, prison officials will still have the ability, on a case-by-case basis, to deny any religious item that would compromise a prison's ability to maintain safety and order. And when corrections officials do prohibit some religious item, the attorney explains, "the inmates will have an opportunity to challenge it, and the prison will have the opportunity to defend and demonstrate to the court why it imperils the security of the prison."

Also, the AFA Law Center spokesman points out, the Supreme Court justices left the door open for appeals on the grounds that prisons could be overburdened by the law. Overall, Fahling concludes, the high court's ruling in the Ohio case is "a good decision, and it does not leave the prisons without the ability to safeguard their own security. They can still do that, and make sound judgments. What they can't do is use that as a pretext to deny prisoners the right to worship."

Religious Freedom Victory's Broader Implications
Brad Dacus of the Pacific Justice Institute agrees that the Supreme Court's Cutter v. Wilkinson ruling will be a boon to many who are working to defend the religious freedom of prisoners and others. PJI recently filed a lawsuit on behalf of inmates who were arbitrarily denied the right to receive free Bible correspondence courses.

Brad Dacus

Dacus calls the high court's decision in the Ohio case "an outstanding victory for prison ministries and people of faith," and he says this positive ruling is one that he and others at PJI expect will "greatly enhance our work." And the PJI spokesman believes the implications of the Cutter v. Wilkinson decision could be broader still, because the Supreme Court opted not to rely on its prior Lemon v. Kurtzman ruling.

PJI notes that Lemon v. Kurtzman has been used for more than 30 years to strike down many expressions of faith on the grounds of "excessive entanglement" of government with religion, or the lack of a "secular purpose." In anticipation of the Supreme Court's upcoming ruling on the constitutionality of Ten Commandments displays, many religious freedom advocates have been calling on the high court to overturn the Lemon decision.