RLUIPA and inmates' right to have sex with their spouses

[Jean Dudley]

I'll be honest:  I'm not at all familiar with either case, not being  
a lawyer nor studied law.   However, the whole deal with conjugal  
visits strikes me as a human rights issue, for those on the outside  
as well as those on the inside, and not one of religious rights.   
Couple that with the incredibly high instance of unprosecuted rape in  
prison, and it's easy to see why Amnesty International has listed the  
US prison system major violators of human rights.

Just my two cents worth.
Jean.
On Jan 18, 2008, at Fri, Jan 18,  3:48 PM, Volokh, Eugene wrote:

> Jean Dudley writes:
>
>> I'd say that yes, the courts would have to uphold conjugal visits.
>
> 	OK, say that this is so.  Now would that create problems of
> discrimination in favor of religion that are far more serious than the
> norm (a normal level of discrimination which Cutter v. Wilkinson did
> accept), and far closer to the level that the Court struggled to avoid
> in Seeger?  After all, if the rule is "You aren't allowed to have sex
> with your wife [or any other woman] ever again -- unless you're of the
> right religion," that's a pretty serious thing to treat people
> differently about, and pretty clearly the sort of thing that could  
> quite
> easily pressure someone to get religion (or to fake getting it).
>
>> Let's take it one step further:  What if a woman is
>> incarcerated, and it was her husband who was filing suit
>> saying that his religious duty was being infringed upon?
>
> 	Oddly enough, I'm pretty sure he'd lose, since RLUIPA only
> protects institutionalized persons.  But if he managed to convert  
> her to
> a religion that imposes the proper requirements on her, then she could
> file her own claim.
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