First Amendment Short Note: Feeling Of Insecurity Is Not Enough To Forbid Inmate Preaching

SPRATT v. RHODE ISLAND DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, USCA-1 No. 06 2038, http://www.ca1.uscourts.gov/pdf.opinions/06-2038-01A.pdf , on appeal from USDC-RID, before USCJs Toruella, Lynch, Lipez, opinion by Toruella, filed 06 Apr 2007.

Plaintiff is serving a life sentence for murder. In 1995 he became a Christian and impressed the chaplains enough that they began allowing him to preach during inmate services. The Universal Life Church ordained him a minister in 2000. No disciplinary problems resulted from Plaintiff's preaching. In 2003, a new warden took over and invoked a state policy that required chaplains, not inmates, to supervise and direct religious services, and the director of RIDOC denied Plaintiff's appeal. Plaintiff pro se sued RIDOC and its director under what is now the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq., seeking enforcement of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. RIDOC moved for summary judgment, filing an affidavit from a RIDOC official that letting inmates preach (expound upon religious writings and principles, instead of only reading scriptures) made them perceived leaders, which constituted a security threat, as Texas experienced when they allowed inmate trustees to have authority. The trial court agreed. SUMMARY JUDGMENT GRANTED to RIDOC. Plaintiff appealed, with help from ACLU.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit noted that prison officials know infinitely more about their institutions than any outsider could, and their judgment calls would receive great respect in the courts. However, under RLUIPA, once an inmate shows a substantial burden on his religious exercise, the government has to show that the burden furthers a compelling governmental interest and that the burden is the least restrictive means of achieving it. The First Circuit had not had occasion before to define "substantial burden," but the total ban on preaching certainly was one. RIDOC's comparison of the Texas trustee system, actually a building tender system where armed inmates supervised and abused other inmates, to inmate preaching was radically different from an inmate offering weekly sermons. RIDOC could show no disciplinary problems from Plaintiff's activities or other similar situations. The First Circuit, on such thin evidence, could neither rubber-stamp RIDOC's policy nor give Plaintiff what he wanted. Further evidence was necessary as to whether RIDOC's ban on preaching was the least restrictive means that would achieve the goal. Experience and policies of the federal system suggested that the blanket ban was not the only way to do it. GRANT OF SUMMARY JUDGMENT REVERSED; cause remanded for further proceedings.

There, see, ACLU is not as useless as some of my colleagues would have you believe. I don't see how this policy can possibly hold up under the First Amendment, and I'm the first to tell you to beware of inmate preachers. They aren't all as reformed as they seem.