Evaluating the Sincerity of an Inmate’s Religious Beliefs

Inmates do not forfeit the right to practice their religious faith while they are incarcerated. But of course that right is not unlimited. Officers can impose certain restrictions when an inmate’s religious practices would conflict with the institution’s legitimate interests in safety, security, and good order. There is a lot of case law about those restrictions, both as a constitutional matter under the First Amendment, and under a federal statute, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-1(a)(1)–(2)—which is even more protective of inmates’ rights than the Constitution. Two important threshold questions often arise when evaluating a situation involving an inmate’s request for a religious accommodation. First, what is a religion within the meaning of these laws? And second, how sincere must an inmate be in his or her beliefs for them to justify legal protection? Many officers may have seen situations where an inmate presented what may have been a secular request as a religious one, either to improve the chance that it would be accommodated, or sometimes as an intentional effort to create a headache for officers. The Supreme Court has said that “officials may appropriately question whether a prisoner’s religiosity, asserted as the basis for a requested accommodation, is authentic.” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 725 n. 13 (2005). However, looking at court cases decided over the years, it is clear that officers should be very cautious in screening and denying religious requests solely on the basis that the inmate’s [...]