Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Hobby Lobby And Inmate Religious Liberty Rights

Ann Althouse highlighted a interesting case  that is being considered to Supreme Court Review. See "[W]atching his hair fall to the floor during a mandated haircut in prison led him to feel that 'most of me was laying on the floor.'" . This of course deals with the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act .

I left this comment :

I think personally this dispute is pretty easy under the 3 prong test. The Indian wins.

 Its interesting to see how this case and the legislative history of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ( Hobby Lobby ) are related. The language between Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act and the RFRA are similar. 

In fact in one brief that is in front of the Court as to Hobby Lobby the legislative debate of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized act is used to help illuminate what the RFRA means. 

Both had a coalition of conservatives , evangelicals, liberals , ACLU types that joined with the respective administration to overturn a Fed Court opinion. 

 In the Hobby Lobby cases there is a segment that wants the entire RFRA declared Unconst ! See recent NYT Op - Ed. It needs to be remembered such logic on the RFRA would have dire results on people protected under the law mentioned here. Including but not limited to Prisoners .

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