[ad_1]
Photo:
Getty Images
The left likes to present religious liberty as a bigotry loophole for intolerant white Christians, so it’s worth highlighting another case that’s an ideological scrambler: Last month a federal appeals court ruled that a male Muslim prisoner in Wisconsin can have an exemption from strip searches involving a transgender guard who is biologically female.
“The moral tenets of his faith” prohibit him “from exposing his body to a woman who is not his wife,” writes Judge
Diane Sykes
of the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. When the inmate objected to a 2016 strip search, the warden responded that the transgender guard “is a male and is qualified to complete these duties.” Prison officials threatened discipline if the inmate raised more complaints.
But as Judges Sykes explains, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (Rluipa) “prohibits a prison from substantially burdening an inmate’s religious exercise unless doing so is the least restrictive means to further a compelling governmental interest.” She says the law covers the sincere beliefs of the Wisconsin prisoner, who might also “feel pressure to forgo activities—such as visits with family or friends—to decrease his chances of enduring a cross-sex strip search.”
The prison argued that giving the inmate any accommodation would violate its legal duty not to discriminate against the transgender guard. But Judge Skyes responds that “requiring strip searches to be performed by guards of the same sex as the inmate does not materially alter the conditions of employment.” Wisconsin state policy already bans “cross gender” strip searches “except in exigent circumstances,” and the court says the legal analysis “does not change based on a guard’s transgender status.”
Religious liberty is in the First Amendment because it’s a core American value. Offering an accommodation to the Wisconsin prisoner in this case shouldn’t be difficult. In 2015 the Supreme Court cited the same law when ruling for a Muslim inmate in Arkansas who wanted to grow a half-inch beard.
These principles used to enjoy broad support. The Religious Freedom Restoration Act passed the Senate 97-3 in 1993. Rluipa received unanimous consent in 2000. Both were signed by President Clinton. Such laws have become less popular on the left lately, but they protect all faiths and help make the U.S. one of the world’s best places to be a religious minority.
Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
[ad_2]
Source link
(This article is generated through the syndicated feeds, Financetin doesn’t own any part of this article)
