Shakur v. Schriro

• Decision Date: 23 January 2008
• Docket Number: No. 05-16705.,05-16705.
• Citation: 514 F.3d 878
• Parties: Amin Rahman SHAKUR, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Dora B. SCHRIRO, Director, sued in her individual and official capacity as Director of Arizona Department of Corrections; Mike Linderman, sued in his individual and official capacity as Director Pastoral Activities; Bhishm Naraine, sued in his individual and official capacity as Assistant Deputy Warden; M. Errol Grant, Esq., Senior. Chaplain, Defendants-Appellees.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

514 F.3d 878

Amin Rahman SHAKUR, Plaintiff-Appellant, v. Dora B. SCHRIRO, Director, sued in her individual and official capacity as Director of Arizona Department of Corrections; Mike Linderman, sued in his individual and official capacity as Director Pastoral Activities; Bhishm Naraine, sued in his individual and official capacity as Assistant Deputy Warden; M. Errol Grant, Esq., Senior. Chaplain, Defendants-Appellees.

No. 05-16705.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

Argued and Submitted August 14, 2007.

Filed January 23, 2008.

Derek L. Shaffer, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA, argued the cause for the appellant and was on the briefs; Kathleen M. Sullivan, Maaren A. Choski, David J. Strandness, and Rhett O. Millsaps, II, Constitutional Law Center, Stanford Law School, Stanford, CA, were on the briefs.

Cathy Stewart, Arizona Attorney General's Office, Phoenix, AZ, argued the cause for the appellees; Attorney General Terry Goodard, Darrin J. DeLange, and Kelley J. Morrissey, Arizona Attorney General's Office, Phoenix, AZ, were on the brief.

Before: DIARMUID F. O'SCANNLAIN, MICHAEL DALY HAWKINS, and KIM McLANE WARDLAW, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge O'SCANNLAIN.

OPINION

O'SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge:

We must decide whether prison officials violated the Religious Land Use and. Institutionalized Persons Act, the Free Exercise Clause, and the Equal Protection Clause by denying a Muslim inmate's request for a religious dietary accommodation.

I

Amin Rahman Shakur is an inmate of the Arizona Department of Corrections ("ADOC") at Florence, Arizona.¹ While incarcerated, Shakur changed his inmate religious preference designation from Catholic to Muslim. In due course, ADOC granted Shakur's request to adopt for religious reasons a lacto-vegetarian diet which includes milk but not meat or eggs. Shakur currently receives an ovo-lacto vegetarian diet, which includes milk and eggs, but no meat.

Shakur has contended throughout the administrative grievance process and this litigation that the vegetarian diet causes him hardship because it "gives [him] gas" and "irritates [his] hiatal hernia." His primary issue with the diet is that his gastrointestinal discomfort interferes with the state of "purity and cleanliness" needed for Muslim prayer.

ADOC provides two kosher diets to Jewish inmates: a standard kosher diet and an Orthodox kosher diet. The standard kosher diet consists of two vegetarian meals and a TV-style dinner that contains meat; it costs about five dollars more per inmate per day than the regular prisoners' diet. The Orthodox kosher diet costs three to five times that amount per inmate. According to Shakur, kosher meat would be consistent with Islamic Halal requirements² and would provide him with an alternative protein source that would not cause any disruptive health problems.

A

In January 2000, Shakur submitted a request for the standard kosher diet, which was denied.³ Subsequently, in a letter dated February 18, 2000, and addressed to Michael Linderman, the Pastoral Administrator at the prison, Shakur requested a kosher meat diet, which he claimed was permitted under the Qur'an. In a. March 8, 2000 letter, Linderman advised Shakur "that a Kosher diet is not a requirement of his religion" and pointed out that "the Department allows Muslim inmates the opportunity to request a vegetarian diet should they choose so as to avoid eating meat that is not Halal."

On March 21, 2000, Shakur filed an Inmate Grievance complaining that his request for a kosher diet had been denied. That grievance was referred to M. Errol Grant, the Senior Chaplain at the jail at the time. Grant responded that "[y]ou were given Chaplain Linderman's response. That has not changed." Shakur appealed Grant's response to Bhishm Naraine, an Associate Deputy Warden, but Naraine denied the appeal, stating that "the experts have given you an informed decision on which I rest my opinion." Finally, Shakur appealed to Terry Stewart, the Director of ADOC at the time, who denied the appeal, stating that Shakur had been advised appropriately.

B

Shakur filed a pro se civil rights complaint on December 18, 2001, and a first amended complaint on May 7, 2002.⁴ On August 5, 2002, the district court dismissed the first amended complaint with leave to amend. Shakur filed a second amended complaint (hereinafter "the complaint") on September 4, 2002, which alleged in Count I the "[v]iolation of religious liberties under First Amendment [and] (any other applicable laws)." Count II alleged "[v]iolations of Fourteenth Amendment and any other applicable law." Shakur specifically noted in his filing that this count involved an Equal Protection claim in that it alleged "fail[ure] to afford the Plaintiff who is a Muslim the right it affords other religions, i.e. Jews . . . ."⁵

The district court issued a memorandum and order granting summary judgment to the defendants on all counts on August 10, 2005. As for Shakur's First Amendment Free Exercise claim, the district court found that, even assuming that kosher meat is not prohibited by Islam, Shakur did "not allege that consuming Halal meat is required of Muslims as a central tenet of Islam, nor d[id] he provide any evidence which would support that contention." Additionally, the district court determined that even if consuming Halal meat was a central tenet, the refusal to provide him with a Halal meat diet was rationally related to legitimate penological interests, namely, avoiding the additional cost and administrative burden. The district court did not address whether the provision of kosher meat meals to Jewish prisoners and denial of Halal meat meals to Muslim inmates violated the Establishment Clause. As for Shakur's claim under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc et seq. ("RLUIPA"), the district court concluded that his free exercise had not been substantially burdened and, even if it had been, ADOC had established that its dietary regulations furthered a compelling state interest and were the least restrictive means of achieving that interest.

The district court also granted summary judgment to ADOC on Shakur's Equal Protection claim "because the Equal Protection Clause does not require state prisons to provide each religious sect or group within a prison with identical treatment." The court concluded that because prisoners were not a protected class, ADOC only needed to show a rational basis for its regulations, which it had satisfied by showing the extensive costs of providing Halal meat to inmates, "especially given the fact that kosher meat is not Halal meat and Muslims are to avoid non-Halal meat."⁶

Shakur timely appealed.

II

Shakur first argues that the district court erred in granting summary judgment to ADOC on his claim that denial of a kosher/Halal meat diet violated the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment. We review the district court's grant of summary judgment de novo. Brown v. Lucky Stores, Inc., 246 F.3d 1182, 1187 (9th Cir.2001).

A

Prisoners "do not forfeit all constitutional protections by reason of their conviction and confinement in prison." Bell v. Wolfish, 441 U.S. 520, 545, 99 S.Ct. 1861, 60 L.Ed.2d 447 (1979). Inmates retain the protections afforded by the First Amendment, "including its directive that no law shall prohibit the free exercise of religion." O'Lone v. Estate of Shabazz, 482 U.S. 342, 348, 107 S.Ct. 2400, 96 L.Ed.2d 282 (1987) (citing Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319, 322, 92 S.Ct. 1079, 31 L.Ed.2d 263 (1972) (per curiam)). However, "`[l]awful incarceration brings about the necessary withdrawal or limitation of many privileges and rights, a retraction justified by the considerations underlying our penal system.'" Id. (quoting Price v. Johnston, 334 U.S. 266, 285, 68 S.Ct. 1049, 92 L.Ed. 1356 (1948)).

"When a prison regulation impinges on inmates' constitutional rights, the regulation is valid if it is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests." Turner v. Salley, 482 U.S. 78, 89, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987); see also Ward v. Walsh, 1 F.3d 873, 876-77 (9th Cir.1993) (holding that Turner still applies to free exercise claims of prisoners after Employment Division, Dep't of Human Resources v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 110 S.Ct. 1595, 108 L.Ed.2d 876 (1990)). Turner sets forth four factors to be balanced in determining whether a prison regulation is reasonably related to legitimate penological interests:

(1) Whether there is a "`valid, rational connection' between the prison regulation and the legitimate governmental interest put forward to justify it";

(2) Whether there are "alternative means of exercising the right that remain open to prison inmates";

(3) Whether "accommodation of the asserted constitutional right" will "impact . . . guards and other inmates, and on the allocation of prison resources generally"; and

(4) Whether there is an "absence of ready alternatives" versus the "existence of obvious, easy alternatives."

Turner, 482 U.S. at 89-90, 107 S.Ct. 2254(quoting Block v. Rutherford, 468 U.S. 576, 586, 104 S.Ct. 3227, 82 L.Ed.2d 438 (1984)).

B

As a preliminary matter, the parties dispute whether a prisoner must objectively show that a central tenet of his faith is burdened by a prison regulation to raise a viable claim under the Free Exercise Clause. The district court held that Shakur was obligated to show that ADOC had burdened "conduct mandated by his faith," citing Freeman v. Arpaio, 125 F.3d 732, 736 (9th Cir.1997), and Bryant v. Gomez, 46 F.3d 948, 949 (9th Cir.1995). See also Graham v. C.I.R., 822 F.2d 844, 851 (9th Cir.1987), aff'd sub nom. Hernandez v. C.I.R., 490 U.S. 680, 109 S.Ct. 2136, 104 L.Ed.2d 766 (1989) (holding that "the burden must be substantial and an interference with a tenet or belief that is central to religious doctrine"). Shakur argues that it is the sincerity of his belief rather than its centrality to his faith...