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| Prison Beard Ban Violates Muslim |
| Prison Beard Ban Violates Muslim Religious Rights, Supreme Court Rules
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| UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
, 21-January-2015
12:32:8 PM |
| The Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously ruled that Arkansas corrections officials had violated the religious liberty rights of Muslim inmates by forbidding them to grow beards.
The case concerned Gregory H. Holt, who is serving a life sentence for burglary and domestic battery. Holt, also known as Abdul Maalik Muhammad, sought to grow a half-inch beard.
More than 40 state prison systems allow such short beards. Most allow longer ones. The exceptions, according to Holt's brief, are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
In Arkansas, prison regulations allow "neatly trimmed" mustaches, along with quarter-inch beards for inmates with dermatologic problems, but ban beards in other cases.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in St. Louis, ruled that the state's security concerns were sufficient to prohibit Holt from growing a beard. Holt then filed a handwritten petition asking the justices to hear his case, pointing out that other courts had struck down policies banning beards in prisons.
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In deciding the case, the justices applied the same legal test that they used in June in the Hobby Lobby case, which allowed some corporations run on religious principles to refuse to pay for contraception coverage for their female workers.
The test, set out in federal statutes, first considers whether the challenged government regulation places a substantial burden on religious practices. If it does, the test requires the government to show that it had a compelling reason for the regulation and no better way to achieve it.
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