Dehart v. Horn

• Decision Date: 30 November 2004
• Docket Number: No. 03-4250.,03-4250.
• Citation: 390 F.3d 262
• Parties: Robert Perry DeHART, Appellant v. Martin HORN, Commissioner of Corrections; James S. Price, Superintendent SCI Greene; United States of America (Intervenor in D.C.).
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

390 F.3d 262

Robert Perry DeHART, Appellant v. Martin HORN, Commissioner of Corrections; James S. Price, Superintendent SCI Greene; United States of America (Intervenor in D.C.).

No. 03-4250.

United States Court of Appeals, Third Circuit.

Argued October 1, 2004.

Filed November 30, 2004.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Edward A. Olds, (Argued), Pittsburgh, PA, for Appellant.

Gerald J. Pappert, Attorney General, J. Bart DeLone, (Argued), Calvin R. Koons, John G. Knorr, III, Office of the Attorney General, Appellate Litigation Section, Harrisburg, PA, Rodney M. Torbic, Office of Attorney General of Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh, PA, for Appellees James S. Price and Martin Horn.

Bonnie R. Schlueter, Office of United States Attorney, Pittsburgh, PA, Catherine Y. Hancock, United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Staff, Washington, DC, Michael S. Raab, United States Department of Justice, Civil Division, Appellate Staff, Washington, DC, for Appellee United States of America.

Before ROTH and CHERTOFF, Circuit Judges and IRENAS,^* Senior District Judge.

OPINION OF THE COURT

IRENAS, Senior District Judge.

Robert Perry DeHart ("DeHart") is an inmate at SCI-Greene ("the Prison"), a Pennsylvania state correctional facility. He is serving a life sentence for murder, as well as shorter consecutive sentences for robbery, burglary and escape, and has been incarcerated in the state correctional system since 1980. He brings this action pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 against Martin Horn, Pennsylvania's Commissioner of Corrections, and James S. Price, the Superintendent of the Prison ("Appellees"), alleging that his Free Exercise and Equal Protection rights under the First and Fourteenth Amendments were violated by the Prison's refusal to provide him with a diet comporting with his Buddhist beliefs. DeHart also brought a claim pursuant to the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000, 42 U.S.C. § § 2000cc et seq. (2000) ("RLUIPA"). The District Court of the Western District of Pennsylvania granted summary judgment for the Appellees on DeHart's constitutional claims, and dismissed his RLUIPA claim for failure to comply with the exhaustion requirement of 42 U.S.C. § 1997e(a). We affirm the District Court's grant of summary judgment as to the constitutional claims and reverse the dismissal of DeHart's RLUIPA claim.

I.

DeHart is a practitioner of Mahayana Buddhism, a religion to which he was introduced while a prisoner. He has practiced his religion daily since early 1990, although his interest in and study of Buddhism dates back to the early 1980s. He meditates and recites mantras for up to five hours a day and corresponds with the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, a religious organization located in Talmadge, California. According to DeHart's self-taught understanding of Buddhist religious texts, he is not permitted to eat any meat or dairy products, nor can he have foods containing "pungent vegetables" such as onions, garlic, leeks, shallots and chives. As a result, DeHart became a vegetarian in 1989, and began declining food trays containing meat in 1993. When he does accept food trays, he eats only fruit, certain cereals, salads when served without dressing, and vegetables served with margarine. DeHart supplements his meals with items purchased from the commissary, including peanut butter, peanuts, pretzels, potato chips, caramel popcorn, and trail mix. He requests that the Prison provide him with a diet free of meat, dairy products and pungent vegetables.

The legal issues related to DeHart's request are best understood against the background of the system employed to feed prisoners in Pennsylvania's correctional facilities. Inmates receive standardized meals prepared pursuant to a master menu, which is designed to provide all of an inmate's daily nutritional requirements. Food for the inmates is purchased and prepared in bulk. Inmates are given limited choice in what appears on their food trays; they are able to decline pork products and elect to receive an alternative protein source, such as tofu or a bean burger, when available. The only deviations from the mass production of meals are for inmates with health conditions necessitating therapeutic dietary modifications and inmates with particular religious dietary restrictions. Doctors prescribe a variety of therapeutic diets, and the master menu includes seven different menus for diabetic inmates, sodium and fat restricted menus, and a menu for inmates with renal problems. Jewish inmates who adhere to a kosher diet receive special meals in the form of a "cold kosher bag," which contain raw fruits and vegetables, Ensure(R) dietary supplements, pretzels, crackers, coffee and granola. Muslim inmates receive special meals in their cells during Ramadan, when they observe a daylight fast. The Prison provides a post-sunset evening meal after the normal supper hour and a breakfast bag, called a "Sahoora Bag," to be eaten before sunrise. As a result of concerns about food spoilage and serving temperature, the Sahoora Bag contains some items not served on that day's master menu. Special items for the therapeutic and religious diets are purchased through the medical department and prison commissary.

DeHart submitted a written grievance to the Prison on June 17, 1995, requesting a diet free of "animal products and by-products" consistent with his religious beliefs.¹ After his request for a vegan² diet was denied, DeHart unsuccessfully appealed his request to Superintendent Price and the Department of Corrections Central Office Review Committee. He also sent a letter to Commissioner Horn outlining his religious dietary restrictions, dated July 1, 1995. After completing the appeals process within the Department of Corrections, DeHart filed this suit, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, in the Western District of Pennsylvania.

This appeal marks DeHart's third appearance before this Court. In his first appeal, we affirmed the District Court's denial of preliminary injunctive relief. DeHart v. Horn, 127 F.3d 1094 (3d Cir.1997) (mem.) ("DeHart I"). The District Court held that DeHart's request for a preliminary injunction should be denied on the ground that keeping a vegan diet was not a command of Buddhism. Despite upholding the result, this Court emphasized that the District Court should not determine "whether [DeHart's] beliefs are doctrinally correct or central to a particular school of Buddhist teaching." Id. at 2.

We next heard DeHart's appeal of the District Court's first grant of summary judgment for the Appellees. The District Court held that the Prison's policy of denying individual dietary requests of inmates was reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest under the standard set out in Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987).³ After the decision of a panel to reverse the District Court's judgment, DeHart's appeal was reheard en banc. DeHart v. Horn, 227 F.3d 47 (2000) (en banc) ("DeHart II"). This Court reversed the district court's judgment and remanded for reconsideration of the second, third and fourth Turner factors. Id. In doing so, we overruled the distinction drawn by our decision in Johnson v. Horn, 150 F.3d 276 (3d Cir.1998), between religious commandments and positive expressions of belief. 227 F.3d at 54. Specifically, we ordered the district court to reconsider whether DeHart retained other means of exercising his religious beliefs in light of our overruling Johnson. Id. We also asked the District Court to assess the impact of granting DeHart's request for a meat and dairy-free diet on the prison community in light of the accommodations made to Jewish inmates adhering to the kosher dietary rules. Id. at 58-59. With respect to DeHart's Equal Protection claim, we emphasized that our overruling of Johnson required Appellees to offer a legitimate penological reason for treating DeHart differently than Jewish inmates other than simply drawing a line between inmates with orthodox and non-orthodox religious beliefs. Id. at 61.

On remand after DeHart II, the District Court adopted the Magistrate's Report and Recommendation to grant summary judgment for Appellees. DeHart v. Horn, No. 95-1238 (W.D.Pa. Sept. 23, 2003). The District Court rejected Appellees' argument that DeHart's beliefs were not sincere and religious in nature. See Magis. Rep. & Rec. on Mot. for Summ. J., at R.R. 19a-24a.⁴ The district court concluded that the second Turner factor weighed in favor of the Prison because DeHart had more than adequate alternative means of expressing his religious beliefs: he was permitted to meditate, recite the Sutras (Buddhist religious texts), correspond with the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas, purchase canvas sneakers instead of leather, have Buddhist materials sent to him from outside the prison and have a Buddhist religious advisor visit him in prison. See id. at R.R. 25a-26a. With regard to the third Turner factor, the District Court found that the dietary accommodation proposed by DeHart was much more burdensome than what was provided to Jewish and Muslim inmates because his diet would require individualized preparation of meals and special ordering of food items not on the master menu. See id. at R.R. 26a-34a. The district court concluded that DeHart's dietary requests could not be accommodated without imposing more than a de minimis cost on the Prison. See id. at R.R. 34a-36a.

DeHart's complaint, as initially filed, also claimed that his right to freely exercise his religious beliefs had been impaired in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, 42 U.S.C. § § 2000bb et seq. (1993) ("RFRA"). In City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507, 117 S.Ct. 2157, 138 L.Ed.2d 624 (1997), the Supreme Court declared RFRA unconstitutional as applied to the States, and DeHart's claim was extinguished. After DeHart II and before the district court's decision on remand, RLUIPA was enacted as a replacement for R...