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Williams v. Bitner
Henry Williams is a prisoner at the State Correctional Institution in Rockview, Pennsylvania. He is a Muslim who takes seriously the Quran's prohibition on eating or handling pork. When Williams was assigned to work as a cook, he was told by prison officials that he could work another assignment on alternate Saturdays when pork was on the menu. On March 3, 2001, however, there was a shortage of cooks, and the culinary food service instructor (CFSI) gave Williams a direct order to ration the pork for lunch. When he refused, the culinary food service supervisor (CFSS) again gave him the order to ration the pork, and he again refused, citing Biblical and the Quranic prohibitions against touching swine. As a result, he was fired from his position and the CFSI charged him with misconduct.
At a hearing a few days later, Williams was found guilty of misconduct and was given 30 days' cell restriction. Williams appealed to the Program Review Committee (PRC), which upheld a hearing examiner's finding that "Muslim inmate kitchen workers can ration pork since such workers are required to wear gloves and therefore do not 'touch' pork, technically."
Williams then appealed this decision to the prison superintendent, who again sustained the hearing officer's decision, adding that in his opinion, the Bible does not apply to Muslims anyway. Williams again appealed, this time to the chief hearing examiner, and his appeal was again denied. Then he filed grievances with the grievance coordinator, who rejected them on the grounds that grievances cannot be filed on matters relating to a pending misconduct sanction.
The 30 day cell restriction (he ended up serving 27 of the 30 days) caused Williams to miss a number of religious observances. He was also not granted a certification in Arabic studies because he missed the last three classes of the course due to the cell restriction. After he was released from the restriction, he was reassigned to another position as a janitor in which he was paid 19 cents, down from the 38 cents he had been making before the pork incident. In addition, prison officials raised Williams' security level from low to medium.
On November 29, attorney David Glassman, of the Lewisburg Prison Project, filed a complaint on Williams' behalf, and asking that prison officials be held liable for violating his rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) and the Civil Rights Act.
On March 18, 2002, Glassman filed an amended complaint asking for compensatory damages; lost wages; expungement of the misconduct report from his disciplinary records; reinstatement to a non-kitchen job paying at least 42 cents an hour; an injunction requiring that prison officials cease harassing Williams for his religious beliefs; attorney's fees; and costs.
On February 14, 2002 the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections filed a motion for dismissal on grounds that RLUIPA is unconstitutional. On April 17, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a brief defending the constitutionality of RLUIPA.
On August 13, 2002, the case was transferred to U.S. District Court Judge Christopher C. Conner.
On September 29, 2003, Judge Conner issued an order denying Pennsylvania's Motion to Dismiss, and in a 20 page decision, upheld the constitutionality of RLUIPA. The decision adopts the arguments made in the Becket Fund brief, especially with regard to the Establishment Clause challenge: "By removing state interference with inmates' religious freedom, RLUIPA furthers the goal of the Establishment Clause, and, for this reason, the Act does not violate the third prong of the Lemon test. Hence, the court holds that RLUIPA does not violate the Establishment Clause of the United States Constitution."
(Williams v. Bitner, U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania, Case No. 01-CV-2271)