Richard R. Watkinson v. Alaska Department of Corrections, et al.

This Petition involves a prisoner who previously received religious accommodations without incident. But after an administrative reinterpretation of the applicable prison policies, he—but not secular groups—was then denied those previous accommodations. He now faces additional burdens in obtaining the material that he needs for his religious celebrations, burdens that the district court found have precluded him from consistently obtaining the material he needs for his religious celebration. The Free Exercise Clause should have protected the Petitioner. But the circuits are divided about whether a “substantial burden” is a prerequisite to a prisoner’s Free Exercise Claim. The Petitioner had the misfortune to have sued in a Circuit requiring such a showing. Further, the Ninth Circuit below failed to recognize that discrimination against prisoner religious practice ought to receive strict scrutiny, rather than mere reasonableness review, because government neutrality toward religion is not “inconsistent with proper incarceration.” Johnson v. California, 543 U.S. 499, 510 (2005) (quotation omitted) (applying strict scrutiny rather than reasonablenessreview to racial classifications in prisons). Even if the Free Exercise Clause did not require strict scrutiny, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000cc-1 et seq., does. But the Ninth Circuit failed to find a substantial burden and thus never reached the strict-scrutiny analysis.