High court rules unanimously for religious liberty
- Jun 15, 2005
The U.S. Supreme Court has delivered an important victory for religious liberty.
The justices unanimously upheld May 31 a federal law that protects the religious free-exercise right of prisoners. They sustained the inmate portion of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), overturning a Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals opinion in the process.
The Sixth Circuit, based in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the only one of five appeals courts that had ruled against RLUIPA, contending the law’s accommodation of prisoners’ free-exercise rights violated the First Amendment’s ban on government establishment of religion.
The decision provided support for a law enacted in 2000 that bars government policies that substantially burden free exercise of religion by inmates and, in land-use cases, by a person or institution. The government, however, can gain an exemption from the law if it can show it has a “compelling interest” and is using the “least restrictive means” to further that interest.
Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said RLUIPA is consistent with the establishment clause “because it alleviates exceptional government-created burdens on private religious exercise. Were the court of appeals’ view the correct reading of our decisions, all manner of religious accommodations would fall.”
Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission President Richard Land said the “unanimous nature of the Cutter v. Wilkinson decision helps to underscore what a tremendous win this is for the free-exercise, religious rights of all Americans. Every American who loves religious freedom should rejoice over this decision.”
The ERLC signed onto a friend-of-the-court brief filed by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty on behalf of a diverse coalition of nearly 60 organizations in support of RLUIPA.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Citizenship, Religious Liberty