Muslim inmate wins religious discrimination appeal

In a resounding win for a Muslim inmate who claims prison officials violated his religious freedoms in denying him proper meals, the Court of Appeals holds the plaintiff can prevail at trial on both his religious discrimination and retaliation claims.

The case is Brandon v. Kinter, issued on September 10. Inmates do have constitutional rights, though they are watered down in the interests of maintaining prison security and efficiency. Plaintiff claims the jail made him eat port on dozens of occasions. The jail says the pork means happened only about ten times, not frequently enough to substantially burden plaintiff's sincere religious practices. The district court said there were only ten offending meals, not enough to violate the First Amendment's Free Exercise Clause.

The Court of Appeals (Calabresi, Walker and Chin) says the jury may find plaintiff was given a pork diet on 63 occasions over the course of about seven months. If true, then plaintiff can win the case. The Court of Appeals held in 1975 that the provision of food cannot unconstitutionally burden inmate rights. More than 60 meals is enough for plaintiff to win. But the Court of Appeals takes things further, holding that even if plaintiff was given pork on ten occasions, he can still win the case. The Court reviews a line of cases holding that even a "relatively small number of violative incidents did not prevent us from finding that a prisoner's religious beliefs were substantially burdened." In reaching this holding, the Court cites cases dating to the 1970s, finding that even a single violation can burden religious freedoms on jail. While the government says ten incidents are not enough, that makes the Second Circuit uncomfortable. The Court says:

For Muslims who follow Islamic dietary laws, consuming pork is a sin at any time, regardless of whether the consumption occurs during a holiday or not. The Quran expressly commands against it. See, e.g., Quran 2:173. Accordingly, when Muslim inmates are served meals containing pork, they are faced with the choice of disobeying the commands of their faith or not eating. We have correctly recognized that it is not generally the role of courts to distinguish between important and unimportant religious beliefs. And we should be reluctant to draw lines that would distinguish and require us to give more importance to some religious commands (such as fasting during Ramadan) over others (such as abstaining from the consumption of pork). The defendants give us no good reason to make such distinctions here. Indeed, it would be absurd to require that courts, in order to determine what constitutes a substantial burden, be made to decide the number of violations of a particular religious tenet that make a sin grievous. Yet that is what the defendants’ arguments would force us to do.

The Court also engages in discussion about personal involvement of the defendants. In Section 1983 cases, you have to name the wrongdoers as defendants. In Colon v. Coughlin, 58 F.3d 865 (2d Cir. 1995), the Court of Appeals set forth a series of standards to resolve when individuals may be sued, including supervisors. There has been some debate in the federal courts over whether portions of the Colon test survive the Supreme Court's ruling in Ashcroft v. Iqbal (2009), but this ruling does not address that issue, maybe because no one briefed it.

The Court also says the jury may find that defendants were deliberately indifferent to plaintiff's rights. We all know that is the standard for these cases. But the Court of Appeals says there may be argument that Section 1983 cases can be won upon a showing of negligence, as the statute contains no state-of-mind requirement, and the Supreme Court said in Daniels v. Williams, 474 U.S. 327 (1986), that "depending on the right, merely negligent conduct may not be enough to state a claim" and declined to "rule out the possibility that there are other constitutional provisions that would be violated by mere lack of care." The Second Circuit has never squarely addressed this issue, as no one seems to brief that issue, and it was not briefed in this case. But that issue remains an open question for future litigants. Hey jailhouse lawyers, are you aware of this?