Goodman v. Snyder, et al.

George Goodman is an inmate at the Menard Correctional Center operated by the Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC), and considers Wicca to be his religion. In 1999, he asked officials of the Stateville Correctional Center to allow him a "lacto-ovo vegetarian diet," which excludes meat, poultry and fish, but includes dairy products and eggs. He also asked that he be allowed to have a deck of tarot cards he uses to practice his religion.

On February 11, 2000 he filed suit pro se in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, charging that IDOC violated his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights by refusing to provide the special diet or allow the tarot cards. He also claimed that prison officials retaliated against him for seeking relief in the grievance process and the judicial system.

The defendants moved for summary judgment on November 16, 2000, and on June 29, 2001, Judge George W. Lindberg granted the motion in part and denied it in part. He gave IDOC 30 days to show why summary judgment should not be entered in Goodman's favor on the tarot card and diet claims, and denied an IDOC motion for reconsideration of the order. On November 28, 2001, Judge Lindberg held that there were material issues of fact in the case and denied summary judgment for Goodman. But at the same time, after having previously denied numerous motions for the appointment of counsel, on November 28, 2001, he appointed a Chicago attorney to represent Goodman, to ensure that proper discovery could be completed and that Goodman would be able to fully present his issues at trial.

An amended complaint was filed on April 11, 2002, dropping some defendants and adding others. A second amended complaint was filed on September 4, 2002, in which a RLUIPA claim was added. On December 2, 2002 IDOC moved for summary judgment, arguing that the diet complaint was moot ("plaintiff was found in possession of three pouches of roast beef") and that the restriction on tarot cards was justified because "some decks contain symbols similar to those used by gangs or other security threat groups." In an opinion and order issued February 27, 2003, Judge Lindberg denied the motion, holding that factual questions remained regarding the diet, and that Goodman claims he bought the roast beef to trade with other inmates, not for his own consumption.

On January 22, 2003, defendants filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings with regard to RLUIPA on grounds that it was unconstitutional. The motion argues that RLUIPA "improperly impinges upon state sovereignty in violation of the Tenth Amendment . . . improperly endorses religion in violation of the establishment clause . . . [and] impermissibly interferes with the power of Article III courts under the separation of powers doctrine." On February 18, 2003, the court certified the case to the U.S. Attorney General and granted leave for the United States to intervene to defend the statute's constitutionality.

On March 17, 2003, The Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed an amicus curiae brief in the case, defending the constitutionality of RLUIPA. The brief takes into account all of the most recent decisions by federal courts around the country, noting for example the holding by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that RLUIPA "is a legitimate exercise of Congressional spending power," and that "if the State of Illinois would rather not comply with RLUIPA's unambiguous conditions imposed on the use of federal prison funds, it has been free since the passage of that Act—and remains free to this day—simply to decline that funding. The State is not free, however, to have its cake and eat it too, to accept federal funds while disregarding the federal conditions associated with them."

The Becket Fund brief also argues that RLUIPA is a constitutional exercise of the Commerce Clause, and that it is "fully consistent with the Tenth Amendment," since it is implicated "only when Congress acts outside the scope of its enumerated powers." RLUIPA "represents a proper exercise of two, independently sufficient, enumerated powers of Congress, the commerce power and the spending power," and thus clearly does not violate the Tenth Amendment.

Finally, the Becket Fund brief notes that IDOC bases its argument that RLUIPA violates the Establishment Clause on "a radical position held by only one sitting Justice of the Supreme Court," Justice Stevens, who expressed his views on the matter in his concurrence in City of Boerne v. Flores. The IDOC argument was "rejected by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (the same court that recently read the Establishment Clause to prohibit the voluntary recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools), and has never been adopted by the ACLU (a friend to many Establishment Clause claimants, yet one of the strongest advocates of RLUIPA)."