Jon B. Cutter, et al. v. Reginald Wilkinson, Director, Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, et al. (544 U.S. 709)
U.S. Supreme Court · decided May 31, 2005 · Supreme Court Database (Spaeth)
- Citation
- 544 U.S. 709 · 125 S. Ct. 2113
- Decided
- May 31, 2005
- Term
- October Term 2004
- Vote
- 9–0
- Majority author
- Justice Ginsburg
- Issue area
- First Amendment
- Disposition
- Reversed and remanded
- Outcome
- Petitioning party won
- Ideological direction
- Liberal
Opinion excerpt
Justice Ginsburg delivered the opinion of the Court. Section 3 of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA or Act), 114 Stat. 804, 42 U. S. C. § 2000cc-l(a)(l)-(2), provides in part: “No government shall impose a substantial burden on the religious exercise of a person residing in or confined to an institution,” unless the burden furthers “a compelling governmental interest,” and does so by “the least restrictive means.” Plaintiffs below, petitioners here, are current and former inmates of institutions operated by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction and assert that they are adherents of “nonmainstream” religions: the Satanist, Wicca, and Asatru religions, and the Church of Jesus Christ Christian. They complain that Ohio prison officials (respondents here), in violation of RLUIPA, have failed to accommodate their religious exercise “in a variety of different ways, including retaliating and discriminating against them for exercising their nontraditional faiths, denying them access to religious literature, denying them the same opportunities for group worship that are granted to adherents of mainstream religions, forbidding them to adhere to the dress and appearance mandates of their religions, withholding religious ceremonial items that are substantially identical to those that the adherents of mainstream religions are permitted,…
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