Religious Liberty in Prisons under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act following Holt v Hobbs: An Empirical Analysis
Journal Title: Religions - Year 2018, Vol 9, Issue 7
Abstract
Religion in the United States remains a consistent source of conflict not only because of the breadth and depth of personal religious commitment, but also because of guarantees from the United States Constitution. The First Amendment protects religious Free Exercise but also constrains federal, state, and local governments from establishing official government religions, endorsing religions or religion itself. Despite the risk of potential conflicts with the constitution’s text, Congress has supported laws that expand religious liberty. One such example is the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (2000), which significantly enhanced prisoners’ right to religious exercise above the minimum provided by the First Amendment. In the 2015 case of Holt v. Hobbs, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Muslim prisoner who had been denied his request for religious accommodations under RLUIPA because the prison failed to satisfy the act’s strict scrutiny standard before it denied accommodations to a prisoner to practice his faith. Via an analysis of case law since Holt v. Hobbs was decided in January 2015 until March 2018, we investigate the extent to which Holt has affected judicial voting in RLUIPA cases and how such voting may have been influenced by judges’ ideological dispositions.
Authors and Affiliations
Lewis M. Wasserman, John P. Connolly and Kent R. Kerley
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP26071
- DOI https://doi.org/10.3390/rel9070210
- Views 371
- Downloads 14
“Religion in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy?” A Pilot Study: The Meaning of Religiosity/Spirituality from Staff’s Perspective in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy
This study examined: (1) the spirituality of staff; (2) its relationship with staff‟s attitudes towards religiosity/spirituality of patients; and (3) with staff‟s integration of religious and spiritual contents in the...
Religious Identity and Perceptions of Criminal Justice Effectiveness
Religiosity and attitudes regarding the criminal justice system have remained largely unstudied to date, despite the centrality of religion as an aspect of one’s identity formation. This study tests the hypothesis that...
“Show Us Your God”: Marilla Baker Ingalls and the Power of Religious Objects in Nineteenth-Century Burma
This essay examines the unusual evangelical work of Marilla Baker Ingalls, an American Baptist missionary to Burma from 1851–1902. By the time of her death in Burma at the age of 75, Ingalls was known as one of the mos...
Post-Secularism in a World-Historical Light: The Axial Age Thesis as an Alternative to Secularization
The secularization thesis claims that religion will lose its public influence as the forces of modernity advance. This hypothesis has long functioned as a paradigm within the humanities and social sciences. However, du...
Can We Move Beyond the Secular State?
The article argues for re-consideration of the secularization so often in the West regarded as an essential condition for a democratic state. Its inbuilt incoherence and problematic consequences suggest that the term s...