Argued
September 7, 2018
Appeal
from the United States District Court for the Southern
District of Indiana, Indianapolis Division. No. 16 C 2887 -
William T. Lawrence, Judge.
Before
WOOD, Chief Judge, and ROVNER and Brennan, Circuit Judges.
WOOD,
CHIEF JUDGE.
While a
serving of meat from a prison kitchen would not prompt most
Americans to run to a federal courthouse, it raises a
critical problem for Indiana inmate Roman Lee Jones. Jones
adheres to a sect of Islam that requires its members to
follow a diet that regularly includes halal meat. It would
not cost the state of Indiana a single penny to provide Jones
with the diet he has requested. The only question before us
in this appeal is whether Indiana's refusal to provide
Jones with meat substantially burdens his exercise of
religion under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized
Persons Act ("RLUIPA"), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-l.
We hold that it does.
Jones
observes Islamic dietary restrictions, which forbid the
consumption of certain foods and require that others be
prepared in accordance with Islamic law-that is, his food
must be halal. Since there is overlap in halal and Jewish
kosher requirements, some Muslims-including Jones-find kosher
food to be an acceptable alternative to a purely halal diet.
(There are differences, to be sure: followers of a kosher
diet may not consume meat and dairy products together, while
followers of halal may do so; alcohol is permissible for
kosher, but not for halal; and the lists of permissible
animals and seafoods differ slightly. See Halal vs
Kosher, Diffen.COM, https://www. diff en.
com/dif f erence/Halal_vs_Kosher (last visited February 14,
2019). Jones does not argue that these differences matter for
his prison diet.)
The
Indiana Department of Correction ("DOC") formerly
provided pre-packaged kosher meal trays, which included
kosher meat, to all inmates who requested them. As demand for
the kosher trays went up, however, so did the cost, which
rose to between $40, 000 and $60, 000 a month on top of the
per capita amount the DOC pays its contractor for standard
meals. Unhappy with this trend, the DOC stopped offering the
kosher trays and put all the affected inmates on a vegan diet
(that is, one with no products made or derived from animals).
That
move satisfied no one: a class of inmates seeking kosher food
sued the DOC and prevailed under RLUIPA in Willis v.
Commissioner, Indiana Department of Correction. 753
F.Supp.2d 768, 772 (S.D. Ind. 2010). Rather than go back to
providing everyone with kosher trays, the DOC worked out a
new arrangement with its contractor so that kosher meals are
now included in the per capita amount it pays the contratcor.
The DOC built kosher kitchens at a few of its facilities and
moved as many kosher inmates into those facilities as
possible. Inmates who could not be moved would continue to
receive the kosher trays, but inmates (including Jones) in a
facility with a kosher kitchen were given only the option of
eating the food prepared there. That food, however, is
vegetarian (i.e. plant-derived, plus animal products
not requiring slaughter, such as eggs, milk, cheese, and
honey).
While
many Jewish and Muslim inmates would find a nutritionally
adequate vegetarian diet that otherwise satisfies kosher
standards to be fully compatible with their beliefs, Jones
does not. Jones and the other members of his sect within
Islam believe that the holy Qur'an plainly commands him
to "eat what is on earth, Lawful and
good"-including meat. Some Muslim scholars support
Jones's interpretation, and the Imam employed by the DOC
agreed that Jones's view is "a valid opinion"
shared by some other Muslims, though not the Imam himself.
Jones does not take the position that he needs to eat meat
with every meal, but he believes it must be a regular part of
his diet. After the DOC refused his request for kosher trays
that include meat, he filed this suit.
Under
RLUIPA, the DOC cannot "impose a substantial burden on
the religious exercise of a person residing in or confined to
an institution ... unless the [DOC] demonstrates that [it]
... (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental
interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of
furthering that compelling governmental interest." 42
U.S.C. § 2000cc-l. Following a brief trial, the district
court held in favor of Jones and ordered the DOC to give
Jones at least eight meals a week that "contain kosher
or halal meat." The judge left it up to DOC to decide on
the most effective way to do this, but he specified that one
permissible response would be to send Jones the kosher trays
the DOC was already providing to inmates at faclities without
kosher kitchens. The record indicates that this would not
impose any incremental cost on the DOC. The court found that
by requiring Jones to engage in conduct- refraining from all
meat-that violates his sincerely held religious belief, the
DOC had substantially burdened his religious exercise and on
this record the DOC lacked a compelling government interest
to justify that burden.
On
appeal, the DOC does not contest the sincerity of Jones's
belief or the district court's finding that the DOC
lacked a sufficient justification for its treatment of Jones.
The sole issue the DOC raises is whether the district court
erred in holding that Jones was substantially burdened by the
vegetarian kosher diet when, as the DOC argues, he could have
purchased the halal meat he needs to supplement his diet at
the prison commissary. The DOC characterizes Jones's lack
of meat as the result of "his own spending
choices," not the result of any DOC action. It urges us
to find that nothing less than the coercive pressure of the
choice between violating his religion and facing starvation
qualifies as a substantial burden under RLUIPA.
For a
time, there was some confusion among the circuits about what
constitutes a substantial burden under RLUIPA.We interpreted
the language as requiring that the government's action
rendered the religious exercise "effectively
impracticable." Nelson v. Miller, 570 F.3d 868,
878 (7th Cir. 2009). Other circuits developed different
tests. See, e.g., Abdulhaseeb v. Calbone, 600 F.3d
1301, 1313 (10th Cir. 2010) (government must require,
prohibit, or substantially pressure religiously relevant
conduct); Moussazadeh v. Texas Dep't of Criminal
Justice, 703 F.3d 781, 793 (5th Cir. 2012) (government
must influence an adherent to act or force him to choose
between a generally available non-trivial benefit and
religious beliefs); Patel v. U.S. Bureau of Prisons,
515 F.3d 807, 814 (8th Cir. 2008) (government must
significantly inhibit, meaningfully curtail, or deny
reasonable opportunities for religious exercise). This
confusion was largely dispelled, however, in two recent
decisions from the Supreme Court: Holt v. Hobbs, 135
S.Ct. 853 (2015), and Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores,
Inc., 134 S.Ct. 2751 (2014). We recognized in
Schlemm v. Wall that Holt and Hobby
Lobby "articulate[d] a standard much easier to
satisfy" than our former search for something rendering
the religious exercise "effectively impracticable."
784 F.3d 362, 364 (7th Cir. 2015).
In
Hobby Lobby, a case involving RLUIPA's sister
statute, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act
("RFRA"), 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-l, three closely
held corporations faced the choice between providing
contraceptive coverage for their employees in violation of
their religious beliefs or paying a substantial fine that
would enable them to omit the coverage to which they
objected. The Supreme Court found that this choice was no
choice at all: it imposed a substantial burden on the
owners' religious exercise, and the government had not
shown that it was the least restrictive means of serving the
government's (assumed) compelling interest. 134 S.Ct. at
2759. The Court rejected the suggestion that the corporations
could "eliminate[] the substantial burden" and
avoid the fine by dropping employee health insurance entirely
since that would also cause economic harm. Id. at
2776-77. In so ruling, the Court emphasized that Congress
explicitly stated that RFRA should "be construed in
favor of a broad protection of religious exercise, to the
maximum extent permitted by the terms of this chapter and the
Constitution." Id. at 2762 (quoting §
2000cc-3(g)).
The
next year, in Holt, the Court considered the case of
a Muslim inmate who wanted to grow a 1/2-inch beard in
accordance with his religious beliefs. Such a beard, however,
offended the grooming policy of the Arkansas Department of
Corrections, and so the Department refused to allow him to
grow it. When the case arrived at the Supreme Court, the
Court read RLUIPA as an "expansive protection for
religious liberty" and held that the inmate
"easily" demonstrated a substantial burden because
he faced "serious disciplinary action" if he
violated the grooming policy and grew the beard. 135 S.Ct. at
860, 862. The Court further rejected attempts to call the
burden of shaving "slight" if shaving was not
absolutely prohibited by ...