personal religious beliefs are as protected as those espoused by organized sects
How later courts described this case
- personal religious beliefs are as protected as those espoused by organized sects
- upholding prison policy allowing each religious faith one religious feast per year
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
NONPRECEDENTIAL DISPOSITION
To be cited only in accordance with
Fed. R. App. P. 32.1
United States Court of Appeals
For the Seventh Circuit
Chicago, Illinois 60604
Submitted July 20, 2012*
Decided July 22, 2013
Before
FRANK H. EASTERBROOK, Chief Judge
DIANE P. WOOD, Circuit Judge
DAVID F. HAMILTON, Circuit Judge
No. 12‐1532
KOFI EASTERLING, Appeal from the United States District
Plaintiff‐Appellant, Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
v. No. 10‐CV‐779
WILLIAM POLLARD, et al., Charles N. Clevert, Jr.,
Defendants‐Appellees. Judge.
O R D E R
Kofi Easterling, a former Wisconsin inmate, believes that Islam commands him to
observe the holy month of Ramadan a few weeks earlier than the scheduled observance at the
Green Bay Correctional Institution. When the defendant prison administrators denied his
request to accommodate his observance of Ramadan in 2010 on dates different from those
observed by other Muslim inmates, Easterling sued the officials under the Religious Land Use
*
After examining the briefs and record, we have concluded that oral argument is
unnecessary. Thus, the appeal is submitted on the briefs and record. See FED. R. APP. P.
34(a)(2)(c).
No. 12‐1532 Page 2
and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000cc to 2000cc‐5, and under
42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of his First Amendment rights. The district court granted
summary judgment to the defendants, ruling that the prison’s policy did not burden
Easterling’s exercise of religion, and Easterling promptly appealed. We affirm. Easterling’s
demands for injunctive relief under both RLUIPA and the First Amendment are moot because
he is no longer a Wisconsin prisoner. RLUIPA does not provide any damages remedy against
the state or state employees, and Easterling’s claim for damages against the individual
defendants under section 1983 is barred by the defense of qualified immunity.
Ramadan is a month of the Islamic calendar revered by Muslims as the anniversary of
the revelation of the first verses of the Quran. During Ramadan, Muslims fast from sunrise to
sunset. Inmates at the Green Bay Correctional Institution do not set their own mealtimes, and
Muslim inmates must rely on prison administrators to accommodate their Ramadan fast each
year by providing an alternate meal schedule after sunset and before sunrise.
Easterling and the defendants disagree about when Ramadan began and ended in 2010.
Because Ramadan is based on a lunar month, each year its starting and ending dates shift in
relation to the Gregorian calendar (the predominant calendar in the United States). The
Wisconsin Department of Corrections employs Muslim chaplains upon whom it relies for
Ramadan’s starting and ending dates. Chaplain Zakaria Nurdeen served in that position in
2010. He relied on the dates set by the Fiqh Council of North America, a group of Muslim
clerics from various sects. He informed the Department of Corrections that Ramadan would
begin on August 11, 2010 and end on September 9, 2010. It appears that virtually every Muslim
in the world except Easterling observed Ramadan within a few days of those dates.
But Easterling believes (and the defendants have not contested his sincerity) that the
2010 Ramadan began on July 21. He insists that, whatever the cost to the prison, his beliefs had
to be accommodated with a special meal schedule. When the defendants denied his demand
and urged him instead to sign up for Ramadan observance beginning August 11, Easterling
sued prison administrators, a complaint examiner, and a chaplain. He claims in essence both
a right to have his religious beliefs accommodated and a right not to be discriminated against
because his religious views are unusual or even unique. He sought both injunctive relief and
damages for alleged violations of his rights under RLUIPA and the First Amendment.
The defendants moved for summary judgment, arguing that Easterling’s demands were
not feasible in light of the prison’s limited resources. In support they attached an affidavit of
Marc Clements, the prison’s deputy warden during 2010. Clements explained that religious
feasts and fasts create an increased workload for the prison’s food service staff. In addition,
special outside religious visitors (such as an Imam to celebrate the feast that marks Ramadan’s
end) require extra security screening and a protective escort. Providing a different date for
No. 12‐1532 Page 3
Ramadan for each inmate who demanded one would be, in Clement’s words, a “huge drain”
on the prison’s limited resources.
The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants. The court, apparently
accepted the defendants’ argument that Easterling was wrong about the dates of Ramadan and
ruled that Easterling had not shown any burden on his religious practices because the prison
used the Ramadan dates calculated by Muslim Imams and permitted Easterling to participate
in the observance. Absent some burden on his exercise of religion, the district court ruled,
Easterling’s claims for injunctive relief under RLUIPA and his damages claims under the First
Amendment both failed on the merits.
On appeal Easterling repeats his argument that the defendants violated RLUIPA and
the First Amendment when they refused to accommodate his request for a religious fast on
different dates than other Muslims. We affirm the district court’s judgment without reaching
the merits of Easterling’s claims under RLUIPA or the First Amendment.
First, Easterling is not entitled to injunctive relief. His release from custody while this
appeal has been pending means that his claims for injunctive relief under both RLUIPA and
the First Amendment are moot. See Grayson v. Schuler, 666 F.3d 450, 451 (7th Cir. 2012);
Vinning‐El v. Evans, 657 F.3d 591, 592 (7th Cir. 2011).
Second, Easterling cannot recover money damages in this case. As the district court
noted, RLUIPA does not permit claims for money damages against states or prison officials in
their official capacity, see Sossamon v. Texas, 131 S. Ct. 1651, 1658–60 (2011), or against prison
officials in their individual capacities, see Vinning‐El, 657 F.3d at 592; Nelson v. Miller, 570 F.3d
868, 886–89 (7th Cir. 2009). Thus Easterling is not entitled to any relief under RLUIPA.
We also conclude that Easterling cannot recover money damages from the individual
defendants sued under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 for violating his First Amendment rights. The
individual defendants are protected by the defense of qualified immunity:
The doctrine of qualified immunity protects government officials “from liability for civil
damages insofar as their conduct does not violate clearly established statutory or
constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v.
Fitzgerald, 457 U.S. 800, 818 (1982). Qualified immunity balances two important interests
— the need to hold public officials accountable when they exercise power irresponsibly
and the need to shield officials from harassment, distraction, and liability when they
perform their duties reasonably.
No. 12‐1532 Page 4
Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 231 (2009); accord, e.g., Whitlock v. Brueggemann, 682 F.3d 567,
580 (7th Cir. 2012). To defeat a defense of qualified immunity, a plaintiff must take two steps.
First, the plaintiff must first allege and then show facts amounting to an actual violation of his
or her constitutional rights. Second, the plaintiff must show that the violation of constitutional
rights was clearly established under applicable law at the time and under the circumstances
that the defendant official acted. Pearson, 555 U.S. at 232. In other words, the plaintiff must
show not only that her constitutional rights were violated, but that any reasonable official
under the circumstances would have realized that her rights were being violated.
As for the first step, whether Easterling’s evidence adds up to a violation of his First
Amendment rights is not easy to answer. Recall again that defendants do not challenge the
sincerity of Easterling’s religious beliefs. The district court’s opinion might be read as deciding
that Easterling is simply wrong about when Ramadan should be observed, but federal courts
are not in the business of determining whether religious beliefs are right or wrong. E.g.,
Frazee v. Illinois Dep’t of Employment Security, 489 U.S. 829, 834 (1989) (personal religious beliefs
are as protected as those espoused by organized sects); Grayson, 666 F.3d at 455; Vinning‐El,
657 F.3d at 593. Regarding disagreements about the dates of a religious calendar, consider the
possibility, for example, of having courts decide whether Christian prisoners should observe
Christmas and Easter on the dates observed by the Roman Catholic Church or the different
dates observed by the Greek Orthodox Church. That disagreement has lasted well over a
millennium, and American federal judges would have no business trying to resolve it.
Another dimension of plaintiff’s case is that the defendant officials discriminated against
him and in favor of the Muslim mainstream by accommodating the majority’s beliefs while
doing nothing for him except urging him to follow the majority practice. When prison
administrators make an accommodation (such as a nocturnal meal schedule) available for the
observance of one faith, the First Amendment requires them to make reasonable efforts to
provide equal accommodations for other faiths, including variants of the same faith.
See Vinning‐El, 657 F.3d at 593–94. This issue of religious discrimination in prison poses one
of the knottiest problems in First Amendment jurisprudence, since prison officials face
significant challenges in maintaining security and safety, as well as substantial constraints on
budget and staffing, and balancing these concerns with a wide range of religious practices can
be daunting. See, e.g., Skenandore v. Endicott, 2006 WL 2587545 (E.D. Wis. Sept. 6, 2006)
(evaluating Native American prisoners’ claims for religious accommodations including
smoking, sweat lodges, periodic group music practice, and religious feasts); West v. Overbo,
2005 WL 2176980, at *17‐20 (E.D. Wis. Sept. 8, 2005) (holding that prison officials reasonably
accommodated demands for observing Ramadan); Charles v. Verhagen, 220 F. Supp. 2d 937
(W.D. Wis. 2002) (upholding prison policy allowing each religious faith one religious feast per
year).
No. 12‐1532 Page 5
So it is easy, on the other hand, to empathize with the defendants and the problem
posed for them by Easterling’s demand for nocturnal meals for him, and only him, for a month.
The accommodation of most Muslims during their Ramadan requires substantial effort and
expense to change the food service schedule from just a daytime schedule to add food service
between sunset and sunrise. As defendants’ evidence indicates, making such a change for just
one prisoner would involve considerable expense.
In this case we follow the path of Pearson and bypass the first qualified immunity
question, whether plaintiff can show a violation of his First Amendment rights, and decide only
the second question, whether plaintiff can show a violation of his First Amendment rights
under clearly established law. The general principles of First Amendment law we have
discussed were clearly established in 2010, but the qualified immunity defense turns on
whether the application of those principles to the circumstances faced by the defendants was
clear at the time. Anderson v. Creighton, 483 U.S. 635, 639‐40 (1987). In this case, application of
the general principles to a demand by just one prisoner for a religious accommodation that
would entail such significant challenges and expense for prison officials was not and still is not
clearly established. Accordingly, we conclude that defendants are entitled to judgment in their
favor on the damages claims under the First Amendment and Section 1983.
Because Easterling is not entitled to any relief under RLUIPA or the First Amendment,
the judgment of the district court is AFFIRMED.