ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, June 20, 1996 TAG: 9606200069
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
In a victory for Rahim X and other inmates, a federal judge ruled late Tuesday that Virginia prison officials must scrap their new policy regarding religious diets.
In trying to ensure that inmates requesting kosher and Nation of Islam diets are sincere, prison officials decided this spring to require inmates to get written statements from rabbis or imams attesting to their beliefs. The clergy also must provide their credentials to prison officials to verify that they are associated with a mosque or temple.
"The institutional policy at issue here ... seeks to transfer the responsibilities of prison administrators to religious authorities," U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson said.
Such a transfer of government powers violates the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment, he ruled. He issued a preliminary injunction ordering the state to stop enforcing its new policy.
Of the 450 Jews and Muslims who were on the diets before the new policy, fewer than 175 secured such statements. It's not known whether all inmates tried to get the documentation. But some clergy refused to vouch for inmates they don't know or refused on principle because they found it "repugnant" to be asked to judge the sincerity of another's beliefs, according to testimony at a hearing Monday.
Wilson said he believes prisons have a "strong" interest in providing just one diet to all inmates and was not ruling that inmates are entitled to religious diets. But since the state provides them, prison officials must decide themselves who gets the diet and cannot delegate that decision to clergy, he ruled.
Department of Corrections spokesman David Botkins said the state is discussing whether to appeal Wilson's decision.
"It appears the department is now charged with determining the religious sincerity of the inmate as opposed to outside religious authorities of the inmate's choosing," Botkins said.
An assistant attorney general representing prison officials told Wilson on Monday that the state was acting under a 1987 court order that officials believed requires the prisons to offer religious diets. Botkins said the state may review that order in light of Wilson's comments.
Rahim X, a 25-year-old inmate at Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn, brought suit against prison officials and represented himself at the hearing before Wilson Monday.
In cross-examination by Rahim X, prison officials acknowledged that they had shifted the decision on an inmate's sincerity to clergy members because they were uncomfortable making it themselves.
But Wilson said granting such governmental power to religious authorities fostered an "excessive government entanglement with religion," one of the criteria for determining whether an action violates the establishment of religion clause.
Rahim X is now on the Nation of Islam diet, which excludes pork, soy products, certain sugars, and a number of other foods forbidden to adherents of the Muslim sect's dietary restrictions.
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