Atheist inmate refused authorization for atheism study group

[Douglas Laycock]

  The judicial willingness to treat atheism as a religion for
purposes of free exercise and RLUIPA is very encouraging.  If the
state permits prisoners with other religious views to meet together,
or order literature, or receive free literature from the state, it
should provide the same rights to atheists.

  The refusal to permit meetings of mixed views may be superficially
plausible but is surely wrong.  I assume the state said it did not
have organized meetings of believers of mixed views, so it didn't
have to provide such meetings for nonbelievers.  (Although the court
puts it in terms of whether it's an exercise of religion and not in
terms of equal treatment.)  But the prison probably has only one
Protestant service, lumping together evangelicals, Pentecostals,
charismatics, and the mainline, Calvinists, Lutherans, and
Antinomians and probably universalists.  It probably has one Muslim
service, lumping together Sunnis, Shiites, and American Black
Muslims.  Clustering related religious views is inherent in prisons,
because of numbers and because of expense.

  So if this guy fears he's the only atheist in the prison, or one of
a handful, it makes perfect sense for him to seek to be grouped with
other related religious views.

  A more general point follows in a separate post.

  Quoting "Volokh, Eugene" <VOLOKH at law.ucla.edu>:

>         Any thoughts on this?
>
>         From Kaufman v. Schneiter, 2007 WL 521218 (W.D. Wis. Feb.
15,
> 2007):
>
>         "Petitioner is an atheist. He contends that prison
officials
> have violated his rights under the free exercise clause and RLUIPA
in
> three ways: (1) by refusing to authorize a study group for inmates
who
> have described themselves as atheists, freethinkers, humanists and
> 'other' and those who have identified themselves to prison
officials as
> having no religious preference; (2) by failing to provide
petitioner
> with publications about atheism; and (3) by preventing him from
ordering
> publications about atheism.
>
>         "Petitioner has not stated a claim under the free exercise
> clause for one simple reason. He does not allege (nor is it
possible to
> see how he could plausibly do so) that merely reading books about
> atheism or meeting in a study group with inmates of various
> philosophical bents constitutes the exercise of his religion, that
is
> 'the observation of [ ] central religious belief[s] or practice[s]'
of
> atheism. Civil Liberties for Urban Believers, 342 F.3d at 760.
> Therefore, petitioner must be denied leave to proceed on his claim
that
> respondents Taylor, Hepp and Huibregtse violated his First
Amendment
> free exercise rights by refusing to provide him with materials
about
> atheism or to authorize a study groups for atheist, humanist and
> freethinking inmates and inmates with no or an 'other' religious
> preference....
>
>         "In this case, petitioner is not challenging the prison's
> decision to deny atheists the opportunity to meet together to
discuss
> their commonly held religious beliefs. Instead, petitioner alleges
that
> he asked prison officials to authorize a group for inmates of
differing
> religious and philosophical persuasions, including inmates with no
> religious preference at all, to meet together to discuss their
differing
> ideas. Such an activity is more akin to a debate society meeting
than to
> a group religious practice. Although petitioner might wish to share
his
> atheist beliefs with others (just as a Christian inmate might wish
to
> evangelize his fellow prisoners), prison officials do not violate
> inmates' free exercise rights when they refuse to permit gathering
of
> inmates of different religious or philosophical persuasions for the
> purpose of facilitating inter-religious dialogue. By refusing to
> authorize a study group for inmates who designate themselves as
> atheists, humanists, freethinkers and "other" and inmates who have
no
> religious preference, respondents Taylor and Hepp did not violated
> petitioner's rights under the free exercise clause or RLUIPA."
>
>         On the other hand, from the same case:
>
>         "[If] petitioner was unable to order books about atheism
because
> of the facility's ban on publications ... [then] the actions of
prison
> officials may have violated his rights under the free exercise
clause
> and RLUIPA as well as the free speech clause of the First
Amendment."
>
>         Why would studying atheism together be unprotected by
RLUIPA
> because it isn't "the observation of [ ] central religious
belief[s] or
> practice[s]" of atheism, but ordering books about atheism be
protected
> by it?  And why would a request for a study group for
> atheists/freethinkers/humanists/"other" and those "who have no
religious
> preference" be treated as a request "to authorize a group for
inmates of
> differing religious and philosophical persuasions" -- simply
because the
> group doesn't just include self-described atheists but also others
who
> sound pretty close to atheism but don't fit within that
"denomination"?
>
>         Eugene
> _______________________________________________
> To post, send message to Religionlaw at lists.ucla.edu
> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see 
> http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw[1]
>
> Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed
as
> private.  Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that
are
> posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can 
> (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.
>
>
>

Douglas Laycock
Yale Kamisar Collegiate Professor of Law
University of Michigan Law School
625 S. State St.
Ann Arbor, MI  48109-1215
  734-647-9713

Links:
------
[1] 
/horde/services/go.php?url=http%3A%2F%2Flists.ucla.edu%2Fcgi-bin%2Fmailman%2Flistinfo%2Freligionlaw

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ucla.edu/pipermail/religionlaw/attachments/20070222/25808ed1/attachment.htm