Eighth Circuit: Perfect Adherence to Burdened Beliefs Not Required to Demonstrate Sincerity under RLUIPA
by Douglas Ankney
On November 2, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit held that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc, does not require a group of Arkansas prisoners to show perfect adherence to allegedly burdened beliefs in order to demonstrate those beliefs are “sincerely held” under the law. Moreover, when a prisoner challenging a policy for burdening his beliefs then proposes an alternative already widespread in other prisons, the burden shifts to Defendant prison officials to persuade the court why they must take a different course.
Prisoners Gregory Houston Holt, Rodney Martin and Wayde Earl Stewart sued state Department of Corrections (DOC) Director Dexter Payne and several employees, alleging that their Muslim religion required them to wear kufi head coverings “at all times” and to “participate in congregational Jumu’ah prayer.” Defendants’ policies permitted Plaintiffs to wear kufis only during religious services and attend only one Jumu’ah service per week, which combined Muslims with adherents of the Nation of Islam (NOI) and Nation of Gods and Earth (NGE). Plaintiffs alleged that the policy “compell[ed] them to violate their faith by forcing them to choose” between skipping required prayer or debasing it when they shared it with those who were not their co-religionists.
Plaintiffs proposed alternatives to the single Jumu’ah service: utilizing other spaces or partitioning the current space or even scheduling services at different times. But after a bench trial, the federal court for the Eastern District of Arkansas dismissed the suit with prejudice, finding that the policies didn’t violate any sincerely held religious beliefs. Holt had not attended Jumu’ah prayer services for five years, District Judge Joe J. Volpe noted, while Stewart and Martin attended Jumu’ah services, but sometimes with NOI and NGE members—demonstrating that their stated beliefs were not sincerely held.
The prisoners also proposed mesh kufis to facilitate security searches, but the judge noted that Stewart had sometimes chosen not to wear one, again indicating that his belief was not sincerely held. Martin and Holt gave conflicting testimony about whether the Qur’an required Muslims to wear kufis, so the district court found their belief was not sincerely held, either, and dismissed their complaint. Plaintiffs appealed.
Citing Native Am. Council of Tribes v. Weber, 750 F.3d 742 (8th Cir. 2014), the Eighth Circuit began by noting that “Plaintiffs bear the initial burden of showing their sincere religious beliefs are substantially burdened by the challenged policies.” But “inquiry of what is or is not central to a particular religion has no place in an RLUIPA analysis,” the Court said, nor is “perfect adherence” to allegedly burdened beliefs “required for a successful RLUIPA claim,” as held in Love v. Reed, 216 F.3d 682 (8th Cir. 2000).
Rather, the Court continued, once Plaintiffs meet these initial pleading requirements, “the burden then shifts to [DOC] to demonstrate that each policy is ‘the least restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest,’” as held in Ramirez v. Collier, 595 U.S. 411, (2022). “If a less restrictive means is available” in a form that “other prisons offer,” then the Court said “a prison must, at least, offer persuasive reasons why it believes that it must take a different course.”
The Eighth Circuit concluded that the district court “misunderstood” the law when finding that Plaintiffs’ beliefs were not sincerely held. Nor did it undertake analysis of Plaintiffs’ proposed alternatives to determine whether they were less restrictive—especially since they were already in use at other prisons; the district court needed to address whether Defendants’ refusal of those alternatives, based on vague “security interests,” was persuasive.
Accordingly, the judgment was vacated and the case remanded for the district court to address whether Defendants’ policies are the least restrictive means of furthering compelling security interests in light of Plaintiffs’ proposed alternatives. Before the Court, the prisoners were represented by attorneys with PPGMR Law, LLC in Little Rock and the Council on Islamic-American Relations in Washington, D.C., plus University of Virginia School of Law Prof. H. Douglas Laycock. See: Holt v. Payne, 85 F.4th 873 (8th Cir. 2023).
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