Ind. federal court rules violation of prisoners’ rights

The lack of kosher meals for prisoners has landed the Indiana Department of Corrections in violation of the law, according to a federal judge’s ruling last week.

An Orthodox Jew inmate at Miami Correctional Facility in Bunker Hill, Ind., Matson Willis, filed a class action suit in 2009 after the agency began replacing kosher meals with vegan meals.

Kosher dietary laws, practiced by observant Jews, prohibit eating certain animals, and the ones that are permitted must be killed, butchered and served according to a specific set of religious rules.

The department claims the removal of kosher meals was due to staggering costs, but Judge Jane Magnus-Stinson ruled in favor of Willis, asserting it was an abridgement of his religious rights.

Doug Garrison, the communications chief for the department, said the cost of a kosher meal is three to four times the cost of the typical $1.20 meal at the prison.    

“Eventually what happened was many, many more people started asking for the kosher meals,” Garrison said. “There was no way to prove you’re Jewish and you don’t prove you have a kosher preference, but many found they liked those meals better and many more people signed up to get kosher meals.”

Garrison said the demand increase for kosher meals added hundreds of thousands of dollars to the monthly bill, causing the prison to exceed its budget.   

While courts may be reluctant to find prisoners insincere in their religious affiliations and practices, IU law professor Daniel Conkle said they theoretically could.

“If all at once you have prisoners claiming to be Jewish, and if the prison has opportunity for Jewish worship and they never go for example, that might be evidence of a lack of sincerity,” Conkle said. “If they’re not practicing Judaism except when it’s time to get meals, that might, in fact, undermine their claim.”

Previously, the Supreme Court ruled that religious liberty could be restricted as long as the prison regulation was reasonable and designed for legitimate, theological interest.

In a 1992 case, Scott v. Mississippi Department of Corrections, the appellate court upheld haircut rules in a case involving a traditional Rastafarian hairstyle, arguing the loss of absolute freedom of religious expression is a sacrifice required by incarceration.

That all changed in 2000 when President Clinton passed the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which states a request for a special religious diet can only be refused based on a compelling prison interest and if it is the least restrictive means possible for the prison protecting that interest.

“Under that standard, to me it’s not at all surprising that the federal court has granted relief to the prisoner,” Conkle said. “In terms of the prison’s attempt to justify denying the kosher meal, that argument, ‘too costly,’ might have worked under the old pre-2000 legal doctrine, but under RLUIPA, it has to be a compelling interest, and cost savings is not going to cut it.”

A hearing in federal court is scheduled for Nov. 30, where a possible injunction may be imposed.