Constitutional Law – prisons — free exercise clause

Listen to this article

United States Court of Appeals For the Seventh Circuit

Civil

Constitutional Law – prisons — free exercise clause

A prison policy of only allowing Rastafarians to wear dreadlocks violates the Free Exercise Clause.

“[T]here is no suggestion that allowing this plaintiff to have grown dreadlocks would have created a wildfire of idiosyncratic observances, and so we are left with what appears to be discrimination (though a trial might cast the facts in a different light). Prison chaplains may not determine which religious observances are permissible because orthodox. Vinning-El v. Evans, supra, 657 F.3d at 595. We held in Reed v. Faulkner, supra, 842 F.2d at 964, that a prison could not forbid Rastafarians to wear long hair while permitting American Indians to do so. No more can the prison permit Rastafarians to wear long hair and without justification forbid a sincere African Hebrew Israelite of Jerusalem to do so, even if he is more zealous in his religious observances than his religion requires him to be.”

Reversed and Remanded.

10-3256 Grayson v. Schuler

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Illinois, Reagan, J., Posner, J.