Lovelace v. Lee
| Decision Date | 29 December 2006 |
| Docket Number | No. 04-7797.,04-7797. |
| Citation | 472 F.3d 174 |
| Parties | Leroy A. LOVELACE, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Jack LEE; Gene Shinault; K. Lester, Defendants-Appellees. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Matthew Anthony Victor, Victor, Victor & Helgoe, L.L.P., Charleston, West Virginia, for Appellant. Mark Ralph Davis, Senior Assistant Attorney General, Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellees.
ON BRIEF:
Judith W. Jagdmann, Attorney General, Richmond, Virginia, for Appellees.
Before WILKINSON, MICHAEL, and MOTZ, Circuit Judges.
Affirmed in part, vacated in part, and remanded by published opinion. Judge MICHAEL wrote the opinion, in which Judge MOTZ joined. Judge WILKINSON wrote a separate opinion concurring in the judgment in part and dissenting in part.
Leroy Lovelace was an inmate at Keen Mountain Correctional Center (Keen Mountain or prison), a Virginia state prison, in 2002 and 2003. He is a member of the Nation of Islam. In 2002 Keen Mountain adopted a policy to accommodate inmates seeking to observe Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting and prayer. Lovelace participated in the Ramadan observance program for roughly six days in November 2002 before being removed from the "pass list" (the list of participants) for allegedly breaking the fast. He was consequently barred from the special meals for fast participants and from Ramadan congregational prayers for the remainder of Ramadan, a total of twenty-four days. He filed an action against Warden Jack Lee, Assistant Warden Gene Shinault, and Correctional Officer K. Lester (the defendants), alleging violations of the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000cc et seq. The district court granted summary judgment to the defendants on all claims. Lovelace appeals the summary judgment and two of the district court's procedural rulings.
For the reasons that follow, we vacate summary judgment in favor of Officer Lester in his individual capacity on the RLUIPA and free exercise claims, and we vacate summary judgment in favor of Warden Lee on the claims asserted against him in his official capacity. We affirm the remainder of the district court's rulings.
Our dissenting colleague agrees that Lovelace's case may proceed against Officer Lester because "Lovelace has presented an issue of triable fact as to whether correctional officer Lester intentionally violated his religious liberty," and "RLUIPA provides a cause of action to redress this type of infringement." Post at 38. The dissent disagrees, however, with our decision to remand for further consideration of Lovelace's RLUIPA and constitutional claims against Warden Lee in his official capacity. A remand on these claims, especially the RLUIPA claim, is necessary to ensure that the prison satisfies its obligation—an obligation it has not yet attempted to meet—to justify the Ramadan policy's broad restrictions of religious liberty. The dissent nevertheless charges that we "use[] Keen Mountain's Ramadan policy as a platform from which to initiate an assault on state correction institutions" and that our "approach exhibits . . . distrust" of state prison officials. Post at 46-47. These statements are a harsh indictment, but we trust the dissent will be alone in thinking them to be true. Our directions come straight from RLUIPA, which Congress enacted because it found that some prisons have restricted religious liberty "in egregious and unnecessary ways." 146 Cong. Rec. S7775 (July 27, 2000) (). Thus, according to RLUIPA, when a prison substantially burdens an inmate's exercise of religion, the prison must demonstrate that imposing the burden serves a compelling government interest and does so by the least restrictive means. With respect to Lovelace's claim against the warden, the thrust of our remand simply requires Keen Mountain to make that demonstration. We confirm emphatically that any substantive explanation offered by the prison must be viewed with due deference, notwithstanding the dissent's claim that we have abandoned "even the pretense of deference," post at ___.
On September 22, 2002, Warden Lee issued a policy to accommodate Keen Mountain inmates seeking to fast during the holy month of Ramadan. Observant Muslims fast between dawn and sunset during the thirty days of Ramadan. According to the warden's policy, inmates approved to participate in the fast received special pre-dawn (5:00 to 5:50 a.m.) and post-sunset (6:00 to 7:30 p.m.) meals in two dining halls reserved for fasting inmates of various Islamic denominations: Dining Hall # 1 for "World Community of Islam" inmates and Dining Hall # 2 for Nation of Islam (NOI) inmates.1 J.A. 27. Prayer services were held either before or after the special breakfast meal in each reserved dining hall. Because participating inmates were expected to adhere to the rules of the fasting period as outlined by the World Community and NOI, they could not eat the regular cafeteria meals offered during the daytime. Warden Lee instructed security and food service staff to submit an incident report on any fast participant seen taking a meal tray during daylight hours. Any inmate who violated the policy would be removed from the Ramadan observance pass list, which meant that he would be barred from participating in the fast and, by extension, the morning prayer sessions. In 2002 the month of Ramadan extended from November 5 through December 4.
Lovelace, an NOI member and NOI liaison at Keen Mountain, was among approximately seventy NOI inmates approved to participate in the 2002 Ramadan fast. As NOI liaison, he had met with prison staff before the fast began to discuss the Ramadan menu and propose possible menu alternatives. For example, he suggested the substitution of real juice for Kool-Aid because Kool-Aid is "an artificial drink which is in direct conflict with the teachings of [the Islamic] faith." J.A. 144. Prison officials rejected these suggestions. At breakfast on November 11, roughly six days into the fast, Lovelace and other fast participants discovered that "the milk being served [to them] was beyond its stamped expiration date." J.A. 17. As NOI liaison, Lovelace informed the kitchen staff about the inmates' "refusal to accept the expired milk." Id. The breakfast staff then replaced the seventy to seventy-five individual servings of expired milk with fresh milk. Lovelace describes his interaction with staff as "contentious" and notes that Correctional Officer Lester was the security officer assigned to the kitchen that morning. J.A. 181. Roughly twelve hours later, Lovelace was refused his special evening meal. He was informed that he had been removed from the pass list because, according to an incident report submitted by Officer Lester, he had taken a lunch tray at approximately 12:35 that afternoon, November 11. (The incident report is not in the record, and Lovelace has never seen it.)
Lovelace filed two emergency grievances that evening and two the following morning, asserting that he had not received a lunch tray and had not even entered the dining hall during fasting hours on November 11. The staff denied each of these grievances within several hours on grounds (1) that the grievances did not meet the definition of "emergency" (immediate risk of serious personal injury or irreparable harm) and (2) that Lovelace should instead "address any further complaints" by using the "inmate complaint/request" system. J.A. 37-40. On November 12 Assistant Warden Shinault formally notified Lovelace in writing that he was barred from "participation in Ramadan" because of his infraction the previous day. J.A. 36. Proceeding as he had been instructed, Lovelace filed a complaint with Mike Shaw, the treatment program supervisor, on November 12 or 13. Shaw or his colleague responded on November 13 that "[t]his [matter] will be left to the Chaplain." J.A. 35. Lovelace filed two additional complaints, one with the warden and one with the assistant warden, on November 13. Lovelace emphasized in the complaints, as he had in the emergency grievances, that he was being denied his right to participate in the Ramadan observance.
On November 14 Lovelace met with Shinault and Shaw and suggested that they review certain evidence to correct Lester's misidentification and reinstate Lovelace to the Ramadan pass list. This evidence included cafeteria security (surveillance) tapes from the afternoon of November 11 and as many as twenty witnesses who were willing to attest that Lovelace had never left the housing unit during lunchtime that day. Shinault told Lovelace that before ruling on the complaint, he would meet with Lester and show him Lovelace's "face card," a photograph kept on file for every inmate, "to confirm Lester's identification of [Lovelace]." J.A. 79. The following day, November 15, Shinault summoned Lovelace to a meeting and reiterated that Lovelace was ineligible to participate in the Ramadan program because of Lester's report, which Lester had "verified" (that is, confirmed). J.A. 34. Shinault, however, had not shown Lester the face card as he had said he would. Nor had he reviewed the security tapes or interviewed witnesses, as Lovelace had urged.
Lovelace filed a formal grievance on November 20 or 21, 2002. Warden Lee responded in a letter dated December 4 (the last day of Ramadan) that Lovelace's grievance was "unfounded." J.A. 30. The warden's letter stated that two officers had spoken with Lester, who said he was "positive that it was [Lovelace] that he observed" eating a non-Ramadan meal. J.A. 30. Lovelace appealed this Level I response to the regional...
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