Today at SCOTUS: Prison Security vs. Inmates’ Religious Liberty

The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral argument today in the case
of
Holt v. Hobbs. At issue is the Arkansas Department of
Corrections’ refusal to allow a Muslim inmate named Gregory Houston
Holt (also known as Abdul Maalik Muhammed) to grow a one-half inch
beard in accordance with his religious beliefs. According to state
officials, the no-beard policy is essential to maintaining safety
and security. It prevents inmates from hiding contraband on their
persons, those officials claim, and also prevents inmates from
changing their appearance by shaving.

But the mere assertion of such rationales is not sufficient by
itself to justify this restriction. In order to pass muster, the
prison’s no-beard policy must satisfy the terms of a federal law
known as the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act
(RLUIPA), which holds: “No government shall impose a substantial
burden on the religious exercise” of prisoners residing in
institutions that receive federal funding, unless the government
can demonstrate that the burden furthers “a compelling government
interest” and “is the least restrictive means” of doing so. If that
language sounds familiar, it’s because the RLUIPA largely borrowed
it from the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the federal law
recently invoked by the Supreme Court in the Obamacare case
Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores Inc.

In this case, the law is squarely on Holt’s side. As his lawyers
at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty observe in their
main brief, “forty-four other state and federal prisons with
the same security interests allow the beards that Arkansas
forbids.” In other words, while prison security is undoubtedly a
“compelling government interest,” the no-beard policy is far from
the “least restrictive means” of achieving it.

For its part, Arkansas maintains that its
correctional officers are entitled to broad deference from the
courts. But that argument not only fails to satisfy the strict
requirements of the RLUIPA, it also runs counter to an important
19th century precedent set by Justice Stephen Field, one of the
Supreme Court’s first great conservative jurists. In the 1879
Circuit Court case of Ah Kow v. Nunan, Justice Field
confronted a San Francisco ordinance which required all male
prisoners in the county jail to have their hair “cut or clipped to
an uniform length of one inch from the scalp.” City officials
claimed it was a public health regulation, but in fact the law’s
real purpose was to humiliate male Chinese immigrants, who commonly
wore their hair in long braided ponytails known as a queues. This
“queue ordinance” (as it was known throughout the city) was just
one of the many racist and xenophobic regulations passed by
California officials in response to the arrival of Chinese
immigrants.

Field struck it from the books. To describe the “hostile and
spiteful” queue ordinance as a valid health measure “is notoriously
a mere pretense,” he declared. “The ordinance acts with special
severity upon Chinese prisoners, inflicting upon them suffering
altogether disproportionate to what would be endured by other
prisoners if enforced against them.”

Field’s logic holds equal force in the present case. A prison
regulation which harms religious minorities in a manner that is
“altogether disproportionate to what would be endured by other
prisoners” deserves no deference from the Supreme Court.