Supreme Court Rules RLUIPA Does Not Violate the Establishment Clause: Church-State Experts React to Unanimous High Court Ruling
The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life offers reaction from church-state experts on the Supreme Court RLUIPA ruling. In addition, the Forum Web site offers a downloadable, legal backgrounder on the case and an online transcript of a discussion by experts on the merits of the case.
(PRWEB) June 1, 2005 -- The Supreme Court yesterday upheld the
constitutionality of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act
(RLUIPA), a federal law that aims to protect the religious freedom of inmates
and others held in state and local institutions. The unanimous decision in
Cutter v. Wilkinson reverses a ruling by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals,
which had held that the 2000 statute unconstitutionally advances religion by
giving religious prisoners greater rights than their secular counterparts.
Religious freedom advocates hailed the decision, saying it would have a
far-reaching, positive impact. “Cutter is a win for religious exercise in
prison, but more importantly, it is a thumping victory for religion-only
accommodations nationwide,” said Anthony Picarello, president and general
counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty. Furthermore, Picarello said,
the decision confirmed a recent High Court trend toward more religious
accommodation. “There’s a strong argument to be made that the anti-accommodation
reading of the Establishment Clause has been dead for a long time, but this
unanimous decision removes any lingering doubt.”
RLUIPA opponents said
that the decision was too open-ended and that it could lead to great disparities
in the way the government treats those who are religious and those who are not.
“The court fails to provide a theory of when it is impermissible for the state
to treat religion better than the secular,” said Richard Schragger, an associate
professor at the University of Virginia School of Law. “It has thus invited
Congress to adopt legislation in areas far beyond prison administration that
will treat religiously motivated persons more favorably than others.”
On
March 17, the Pew
Forum on Religion & Public Life hosted a discussion on the merits of the
RLUIPA case, featuring Professor Schragger; Nathan J. Diament, director of
the Institute for Public Affairs at the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations
of America; and Ira “Chip” Lupu, F. Elwood and Eleanor Davis Professor of Law at
The George Washington University Law School. The full transcript of the
discussion is available at http://www.pewforum.org/events/index.php?EventID=70
.
In February, the Forum published an in-depth backgrounder on the case, which provides legal and
historical analysis of the issues in Cutter. An addendum to the backgrounder,
analyzing Justice Ginsburg’s decision and its possible impact on future cases,
will soon be available on the Forum’s Web site, http://www.pewforum.org.
RLUIPA allows a state or locality to limit an inmate’s religious freedom
only if it can show that the restriction advances a compelling government
interest, such as maintaining prison security. The statute imposes the same
standard on zoning laws and other land-use regulations that negatively impact
churches and other houses of worship, but that section of the law was not at
issue in the case.
The case began when a number of Ohio prisoners who are
members of the Satanist religion and other unconventional sects sued the state,
alleging that prison officials had not adequately accommodated their religious
needs and had therefore violated RLUIPA. Ohio argued that because RLUIPA
mandates religious accommodation, it is a “law respecting an establishment of
religion” and therefore prohibited by the First Amendment.
Writing for
the entire court, Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg rejected Ohio’s
contention, arguing that the law “confers no privileged status on any particular
religious sect .…” She compared RLUIPA with other constitutionally acceptable
accommodations for religion, noting, for example, that a prison is
constitutionally free to allow prisoners to assemble for worship even if the
prison forbids inmates from holding political rallies.
“In the past, the
court has said there is a zone between the government’s obligation to guarantee
the free exercise of religion and its obligation not to establish religion, and
that within that zone, it can legislate religious accommodation,” said David
Masci, a senior fellow at the Pew Forum. “In Cutter, Justice Ginsberg has said
that RLUIPA fits comfortably into that zone.”
The Pew Forum on Religion
& Public Life delivers timely, impartial information to national opinion
leaders on issues at the intersection of religion and public affairs; it also
serves as a neutral venue for discussions of those matters. The Forum is a
project of the Pew Research Center, a nonpartisan “fact tank” that provides
information on the issues, attitudes and trends shaping America and the
world.
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Source : http://www.prweb.com/releases/2005/6/prweb246823.htm