RLUIPA.org
Denial of Religious Materials Violates RLUIPA, First Amendment
California Prisoners who had been denied access to a Bible and other free religious materials finally won their legal battle when the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of California ruled that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations had violated the prisoners’ religious rights under the first amendment and RLUIPA.
Jesus Christ Prison Ministries (JCPM) is a not-for-profit religious organization that provides religious materials free of charge to incarcerated persons who specifically request them. The policy of the California State Substance Abuse Treatment Facility was such that prisoners could only receive literature from a small list of “approved” commercial vendors like Amazon.com. Under this policy, state prisoners Daniel Leffel, Marvin Salinas and Daniel Marchy were not allowed to receive any of the religious materials offered by JCPM and similar non-profit religious organizations, including softbound books (bibles), unbound study guides and pamphlets or sermons and Christian music on audio tapes and compact discs. The court held that this policy violated the prisoner’s free exercise of religion under RLUIPA:
“Being denied access to these religious materials compels inaction with respect to studying the Bible, listening to sermons and Christian music and propagating and teaching others about the Christian faith, all of which the undisputed evidence establishes as core elements of plaintiffs' Christian faith. Thus, the undisputed evidence demonstrates that the restrictions imposed by the authorized vendor policy place a substantial burden on the exercise of plaintiffs' religious beliefs.”
The case is Jesus Christ Prison Ministry v. California Department of Corrections, No. S-05-0440, 2006 WL 2792823 (E.D.Cal. Sep 28, 2006) Read the court order.