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Plaintiff Marlo Thomas, incarcerated at the Ely State Prison (ESP), brought this action against former ESP Warden E.K. McDaniel, former ESP Associate Warden Renee Baker, and former ESP Associate Warden Debra Brooks, for an alleged violation of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. The Plaintiff claimed that he was placed in administrative segregation by the Respondents because they had a personal grudge against him because he was a Muslim inmate. The Respondents filed a motion for summary judgment. The District Court found that the Plaintiff failed to submit any evidence to support several elements of his First Amendment free exercise claim and his Fourteenth Amendment claim. The District Court found that the Plaintiff produced no evidence that he sincerely believed he must engage in group worship to satisfy the tenants of his Islamic faith. Furthermore, the District Court found that the Plaintiff produced no evidence that Respondents' decision to confine him in administrative segregation was not reasonably related to the prison's legitimate penological interests, and instead found that the Plaintiff was placed in administrative segregation for safety and security reasons unrelated to religious discrimination.

On March 6, 2017, President Donald J. Trump, issued a second Executive Order which barred, with certain exceptions, entry to the United States of nationals from predominantly Muslim countries. This order barred nationals from six Muslim-majority countries (the original seven except for Iraq), suspended the entry of refugees for 120 days, and reduced the number of refugees who can be admitted to the United States by more than half. The Plaintiffs (the International Refugee Assistance Project; HIAS, Inc., the Middle East Studies Association; Muhammed Meteab; Paul Harrison; Ibrahim Ahmed Mohomed; John Does Nos. 1 & 3; and Jane Doe No. 2) filed a Motion for a Temporary Restraining Order or a Preliminary Injunction. In an opinion by U.S. District Judge Theodore D. Chuang, the United States District Court for the District of Maryland found that the revised Executive Order should be halted because the Plaintiffs are likely to establish that Section 2(c) of the revised Executive Order, which issued the travel ban against citizens of the six designated Muslim-majority countries, violates the Constitution and federal law, specifically the Establishment Clause and Immigration and Nationality Act, 8 U.S.C. §§ 1101-1537 (2012).

The Plaintiffs argued that they had standing to assert the claim that the revised Executive Order violated the Establishment Clause because the “anti-Muslim views” underlying the Executive Order caused them stress and anxiety. The Court acknowledged that for “purposes of an Establishment Clause claim, non-economic, intangible harms to “spiritual, value-laden beliefs” can constitute a particularized injury sufficient to support standing. Suhre v. Haywood Cty., 131 F.3d 1083, 1086 (4th Cir. 1997). Because the harm suffered by the individual Plaintiffs is “fairly traceable to the challenged conduct” in that the revised Executive Order will result in the disfavoring of Islam, the Court found that the Plaintiffs had standing to assert an Establishment Clause claim.

The Court further determined that in order to withstand an Establishment Clause challenge under the Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602, 91 S. Ct. 2105, 29 L. Ed. 2d 745 (1971) test, (1) an act must have a secular purpose, (2) “its principal or primary effect must be one that neither advances nor inhibits religion,” and (3) it must not “foster ‘an excessive government entanglement with religion.’” Id. at 612-613 (citations omitted). The Court found that the Plaintiffs presented a convincing case that the revised Executive Order fails the Lemon test because there is substantial, direct evidence that the travel ban was motivated by a desire to ban Muslims as a group from entering the United States. The Plaintiffs primarily relied on statements made by President Trump and his advisors, including a “Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration” on his campaign website “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our representatives can figure out what is going on,” an interview with CNN in which Trump professed that he believed “Islam hates us” and that the United States had “allowed this propaganda to spread all through the country that [Islam] is a religion of peace,” and a written statement about the December Berlin attack in which he lamented that people “prepared to celebrate the Christmas holiday” were killed by “ISIS and other Islamic terrorists [who] continually slaughter Christians in their communities and places of worship as part of their global jihad.” Many of the statements about Islam, including references to Islam generally and to jihād, tend to refer to false conceptions of Islamic law or sharīʿa as inherently violent.

Rejecting the argument about neutrality on its face, the Court granted in part and denied in part the Plaintiffs’ motion. The Court issued a preliminary injunction barring enforcement of Section 2(c) of the Executive Order.

Editors’ Note: Many of the statements about Islam, including references to Islam generally and to jihād, tend to refer to false conceptions of Islamic law or sharīʿa as inherently violent.

On March 6, 2017, President Donald J. Trump, issued a revised Executive Order which barred, with certain exceptions, entry to the United States of nationals from six predominantly Muslim countries, suspended the entry of refugees for 120 days, and reduced the number of refugees who can be admitted to the United States by more than half. The Plaintiffs (the State of Hawai’i and Dr. Ismail Elshikh, an American citizen of Egyptian descent who serves as the Imam of the Muslim Association of Hawai’i) filed a motion for a nationwide temporary restraining order.

The Plaintiffs argued that the revised Executive Order subjected them to discrimination in violation of the Constitution and the Immigration and Nationality Act 8 U.S.C. § 1101 et seq. (INA), because the Executive Order results in “their having to live in a country and in a State where there is the perception that the Government has established a disfavored religion.” The Plaintiffs pointed to public statements by the President and his advisors regarding the implementation of a “Muslim Ban,” which the Plaintiffs contended was the tacit and illegitimate motivation underlying the revised Executive Order. For example, the Plaintiffs pointed to a statement by President Trump that he was “establishing a new vetting measure to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America,” and that “We don’t want them here,” and to an interview with President Trump in which he claimed: “Do you know if you were a Christian in Syria it was impossible, at least very tough to get into the United States? If you were a Muslim you could come in, but if you were a Christian, it was almost impossible and the reason that was so unfair, everybody was persecuted in all fairness, but they were chopping off the heads of everybody but more so the Christians. And I thought it was very, very unfair. So we are going to help them.”

The Court found that the State of Hawai’i and Dr. Elshikh both had standing to assert their claims. The Court found that Hawai’i had standing due to the harms to the state’s proprietary interests as operator of public universities and due to preliminary data that indicated the revised Executive Order had suppressed international travel and injured tourism as Hawai’i’s main economic driver. As for Dr. Elshikh’s standing, the Court observed that the injury-in-fact prerequisite can be “particularly elusive” in Establishment Clause cases because plaintiffs do not typically allege an invasion of a physical or economic interest. “Despite that, a plaintiff may nonetheless show an injury that is sufficiently concrete, particularized, and actual to confer standing.” See Catholic League, 624 F.3d at 1048-49; Vasquez v. L.A. County, 487 F.3d 1246, 1250 (9th Cir. 2007). Dr. Elshikh had standing because the revised Executive Order left him and his family, including a wife of Syrian descent and young children who are American citizens, with the knowledge that the United States—their own country—would discriminate against individuals who are the same ethnicity as them, and who hold the same religious beliefs. The Court found that, because the revised Executive Order targeted Muslim citizens due to their religious views and national origin, which may result in these citizens being unable to associate freely with those of other faiths, the injuries are sufficiently personal, concrete, particularized and actual to confer standing in the Establishment Clause context.

As for the Establishment Clause claim, the Court declined the Defendants’ urging to rely on the Executive Order’s religiously neutral text, and instead evaluated the text in conjunction with the historical background of the revised Executive Order. The Court found this historical record “includes significant and unrebutted evidence of religious animus driving the promulgation of the Executive Order and its related predecessor.” The Court included statements made by President Trump including: “I think Islam hates us” and “People were so upset when I used the word Muslim. Oh, you can’t use the word Muslim. Remember this. And I’m okay with that, because I’m talking territory instead of Muslim.”

Because the Court found that the Plaintiffs have shown a “strong likelihood” of succeeding on their claim that the Executive Order violates First Amendment rights under the Constitution, and “it is always in the public interest to prevent the violation of a party’s constitutional rights,” Melendres v. Arpaio, 695 F.3d 990, 1002 (9th Cir. 2012), the Court granted the Plaintiffs’ motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO). In effect, the TRO now blocks the second version of the ban.

Editors’ Note: Many of the statements about Islam, including references to Islam generally and to jihād, tend to refer to false conceptions of Islamic law or sharīʿa as inherently violent.

Plaintiff Shawn Sharp, an inmate in the custody of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC), brought this civil rights action pursuant to the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and RLUIPA, claiming that two prison facilities unlawfully denied his request to accommodate his particular religious group. The plaintiff claimed that the Sunni Muslim services offered at the DOC did not allow him free exercise of his religion, since he is a member of the so-called Habashi sect of Islam, which has ideological differences from the prison’s recognized Sunni group. The prison’s Muslim chaplain disagreed, stating that if Sharp was a Sunni Muslim, as he claimed to be, then there was no reason why Sharp could not attend the already-provided services of Sunni Muslims. The Court decided in favor of the Defendants, determining that the DOC successfully presented a qualified immunity defense, and that the plaintiff’s request had no rational connection to any legitimate penological interest.

William Knuckles and several other inmates, all adherents of the Nation of Islam, filed a §1983 claim against prison officials, alleging a violation of their First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Specifically, they alleged that they were not allowed to correspond with their religious leaders, receive books and periodicals, "wear Muslim medals," or have a special dietary plan. In finding that the inmates were entitled to be visited by qualified ministers, the Court cautioned that all meetings should remain of a religious nature and could be supervised by prison officials.

Phillip Jean-Laurent brought an action against South Carolina prison officials for allegedly violating his First Amendment right to the free exercise of his Islamic religious tenets and the Eighth Amendment. Specifically, the plaintiff claimed that the respondents prevented his attendance at Islamic religious services during Ramadan as retaliation for him using the law library, and deprived him of evening and morning meals required by Muslim religious exercises during Ramadan, in preparation for fasting during daylight hours. The District Court found that the respondents properly answered the interrogatories as to the policy of forbidding the plaintiff to attend prayer services, but that the respondents did not properly answer questions in document requests regarding the plaintiff's and other Muslim prisoners’ ability to secure Ramadan morning meals.

This provincial regulation makes revisions to the language of Aceh Provincial Regulation No. 3 of 2000 on the Creation of the Ulama Consultative Council and its Functions.

This regional regulation makes amendments to Indramayu Regency Regulation No. 7 of 1999 on Prostitution. Notably, it reduces the maximum penalty for contravention of the regulation from six months' imprisonment or a fine of up to IDR 5 million, to three months' imprisonment or a fine of up to IDR 5 million.

Muslim inmate Imam Abd’Allah Halim Abdul Akbar (aka Phillip M. Hudson) sued several prison officials under §1983, alleging a violation of his First Amendment free exercise rights. Specifically, the plaintiff alleged that the prison denied his attempts to start a Muslim inmate group. The prison officials argued that the denial resulted from the plaintiff’s failure to follow the proper procedures for creating such a group. The Court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant, concluding that the prison did not deprive the plaintiff of his ability to practice his religion and that the regulations governing creation of inmate groups were consistent with legitimate penological objectives of preventing gang activity and maintaining order in the prison population. 

Faris Matiyn, an inmate at the Attica prison, mounted a § 1983 claim against the commissioner of the New York State Department of Corrections and prison superintendent Walter Kelly. The plaintiff alleged that the prison violated his First Amendment free exercise right by not allowing Sunnī and Shīʿī Muslims—the two major Muslim denominations—to have separate worship services. The Court granted summary judgment in favor of the defendant, concluding that the plaintiff did not speak for the majority of the Sunnī Muslim community and that keeping the two groups together satisfied legitimate penological objectives, such as maintaining a safe prison environment. 

The Plaintiff, Christopher B. Scott, brought suit against Dekalb County prison officials. The Plaintiff claimed that the Respondents violated his First Amendment constitutional rights by 1) not providing a Muslim chaplain; 2) not allowing Muslim prisoners to wear a kufi; 3) failing to provide a secure and private place to pray five times a day; and 4) not providing a special meal at the end of Ramadan. The Respondents sought summary judgment on the issue of exhaustion, claiming that the plaintiff had not exhausted the administrative remedies necessary to bring suit. The Magistrate Court recommended that the Respondents' motion for summary judgment be granted on the Plaintiff's claims concerning the wearing of a kufi and concerning the celebration of an end-of-Ramadan meal. Summary judgment for all other claims was denied.

Plaintiff Jim Davis challenged a prison policy that imposed a temporary, total ban on the purchase and receipt of prayer oil as a violation of both his First Amendment and RLUIPA rights. The Respondents, the prison administration and various officers individually named in the complaint, counterclaimed that a ban on prayer oils furthered a legitimate government interest, as prayer oils posed a fire, health, and safety hazard. The Plaintiff alleged in a second claim against the Respondents that they retaliated against him for filing a grievance regarding this prison policy by restricting the purchase of religious items to the quarterly packages he could receive while incarcerated. The Respondents filed a motion to dismiss. The District Court determined that the Plaintiff stated a cognizable First Amendment and RLUIPA violation with respect to the prayer oil ban, because the Plaintiff sufficiently showed that the prayer oils were not flammable and therefore did not pose a risk. The District Court granted the motion to dismiss with regard to the second claim because the District Court determined that restricting religious items to the quarterly packages did not sufficiently burden his practice of religion, as he was not denied all access to prayer oil and was still allowed to order oil in quarterly packages.

Plaintiff Sha-Heed Rahman, a Shīʿī Muslim prisoner in the New York Department of Corrections (“DOCS”), brought this lawsuit against the respondents, various DOCS prison officials, alleging that the respondents violated a settlement agreement, retaliated against him, and conspired to punish him for pursuing his First Amendment rights to exercise his religion and access the courts. The plaintiff originally brought a civil rights lawsuit in 2004, claiming that the respondents violated his First Amendment rights by only employing Sunnī chaplains at DOCS facilities and not allowing inmates to observe Shīʿī holy days. The plaintiff and the respondents entered into a settlement agreement which included the plaintiff’s right to an alternative Shīʿī Friday prayer (jumuʿa) service. In this current suit, the plaintiff claimed that the respondents had failed to provide a separate Shīʿī service and failed to provide Shīʿī study classes. The plaintiff also claimed that when he filed grievances in an attempt to enforce the settlement agreement terms, he was sent to the Special Housing Unit as punishment. The respondents filed a motion to dismiss the claim. The District Court granted the respondents’ motion to dismiss, determining that the plaintiff failed to state a claim. However, the District Court granted the plaintiff leave to amend the claim regarding his First Amendment and retaliation concerns with respect to the provision of Shīʿī study classes.

Prison inmate Lawrence Cochran filed a §1983 claim against prison officials for allegedly violating his First Amendment rights by not allowing him to have food in his cell at night to break the Ramadan fast and by limiting his attendance of religious services. The Court granted the motion for summary judgment in favor of the defendants, holding that incarceration necessarily curtails some freedom, and that, in this context, the curtailment did not go so far as to place a substantial burden on Muslim inmates’ ability to practice their religion.

The plaintiff petitioned the Court to bury his wife according to Islamic legal requirements over the objections of her family. The plaintiff claimed that he and his wife had shared the Islamic faith and had married by way of an Islamic marriage ceremony the previous year. However, they never obtained a marriage license, and there was no proof of her faith or burial wishes. The Court found in favor of the deceased’s parents, concluding that, without a marriage license, the plaintiff was not her surviving spouse before the law. Therefore, the deceased was to be buried according to her parents' wishes. The Court did not view this as a potential First Amendment Free Exercise issue.

Plaintiffs, Muslim prisoners, sued the Massachusetts Department of Corrections, alleging violations of state and federal law, including the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, § 1983, and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). Plaintiffs alleged that being patted down by female prison guards violated their First Amendment free exercise rights inasmuch as it contravened the tenets of their Islamic faith, which forbids intimate contact between unrelated members of the opposite gender. The Court granted the defendants’ motion for summary judgment for most of the claims, but denied it with respect to the RLUIPA and the Massachusetts General Law claims, concluding that a jury would best be able to determine whether the alleged infraction violated the terms of these two statutes.

Plaintiff James McRoy claimed that prison officials violated his First Amendment free exercise rights by cancelling some of the scheduled Muslim prayer services without notice, limiting the number of services that Muslim inmates could attend each week, limiting the number of Muslim inmates who could attend each service at any given time, subjecting Muslim inmates to strip searches before they could leave their cells to attend services, prohibiting imams from bringing religious publications onto the prison’s premises, and prohibiting Muslim inmates from exclusively living together in one of the prison’s living units. The prison officials, however, claimed that their actions resulted from a lack of volunteers to organize services and the need to curtail inmate movement on some days because of heightened security concerns. The Court held that McRoy did not sufficiently demonstrate that a jury could conclude that he had been subjected to a violation of his rights. It thus entered summary judgment in favor of the defendants.

The Court reversed the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York’s grant of summary judgment in favor of defendant prison officials, John McGinnis, Patrick McGann, and Gordon Lord. Plaintiff Wayne Ford sued under § 1983, alleging a violation of his First Amendment rights by the denial of his request to attend the Eid al-Fitr feast (the holiday at the end of Ramadan); prison officials had moved the event to fall several days after its official occurrence in order that it coincide with a weekend. Defendants argued that their denial of plaintiff inmate’s request to attend the event did not amount to a constitutional violation because the event, once moved, no longer fell on a date of religious significance. The Court concluded that summary judgment was inappropriate because the matter required closer scrutiny of the Turner/O’Lone Test (which balances prisoners' religious accommodation requests with legitimate penological concerns) than the District Court accorded it before finding in favor of either party.

Petitioner Kofi Easterling, an inmate at Green Bay Correctional Institution (GBCI), filed suit against the Respondents, various prison officials, alleging that they ignored the Petitioner's instructions as to when Ramadan began. The Petitioner claimed that the Respondents’ Ramadan date violated his religious beliefs under the First Amendment and RLUIPA. In the District Court, the Respondents filed a motion for summary judgment, to which the Plaintiff filed a motion for summary judgment in response. The District Court granted summary judgment to the Respondents, finding that the Plaintiff’s RLUIPA claim failed because he had produced no evidence of a substantial burden on his religious exercise. Because the Plaintiff failed to meet his burden under RLUIPA, he similarly failed to establish that the Respondents burdened a “central religious belief or practice” in violation of the Free Exercise Clause. Therefore, the Respondents were entitled to summary judgment on the First Amendment and RLUIPA claims. The Court of Appeals affirmed.

Plaintiff Charles Glenn, an inmate at the New Hampshire Department of Corrections (DOC) filed suit against the Respondents, various DOC prison officials, for alleged violations of his rights to free exercise [of his ability to exercise Islamic ritual law] under the First Amendment and RLUIPA. Specifically, the Plaintiff – a practicing Muslim – argued that there had been no Friday prayer (jumuʿa) services at the New Hampshire State Prison for the past three years and that he had no access to an Imam (a Muslim prayer leader), a Qur’an, or other Islamic literature, which placed constraints on his ability to practice Islam [specifically, it's ritual law aspects]. In conducting a Preliminary Review, the Court applied the four-part test for examining the constitutionality of a regulation that restricts an inmate’s First Amendment free exercise of religion found in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89-90 (1987). The Court assessed the four Turner factors -- (1) whether there is a valid, rational connection between the regulation and the legitimate government interest put forward to justify it; (2) whether alternative means to exercise the right exist; (3) what impact accommodating the right will have on prison resources; and (4) whether there was an absence of alternatives to the prison regulation. The Court found that the prison’s policy of denying Friday Prayer (jumuʿa) services, which are a central and essential element of religious practice, impinged on the Plaintiff’s First Amendment right to exercise his religion.