Lawson v. Wainwright

• Decision Date: 18 July 1986
• Docket Number: No. 83-8409-CIV.,83-8409-CIV.
• Citation: 641 F. Supp. 312
• Parties: Robert Lee LAWSON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Southern District of Florida

641 F. Supp. 312

Robert Lee LAWSON, et al., Plaintiffs, v. Louie L. WAINWRIGHT, et al., Defendants.

No. 83-8409-CIV.

United States District Court, S.D. Florida, Miami Division.

July 18, 1986.

Randall C. Berg, Jr., Peter M. Siegel, Florida Justice Institute, Inc., Miami, Fla., for plaintiffs.

Carl J. Zahner, Asst. Atty. Gen., Dept. of Legal Affairs, Tallahassee, Fla., for defendants.

MEMORANDUM OPINION INCLUDING FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

ARONOVITZ, District Judge.

THIS CAUSE came on for a non-jury trial before the Court commencing Monday, May 19, 1986 and was heard over a five day period. The Court received extensive pre-trial memoranda, heard the testimony of twelve expert and fifteen lay witnesses, and the argument of counsel for the parties. In addition, the Court has closely examined the numerous exhibits offered by the parties. On June 9, 1986, the parties submitted post-trial memoranda presenting their views of the applicable legal standards to be applied by the Court in this matter.

THE COURT, having carefully considered all of the evidence presented, the pertinent portions of the record, the various memoranda of law, the argument of counsel, and the applicable law, and being otherwise fully advised in the premises, enters herein its memorandum opinion containing findings of fact and conclusions of law.

THE NATURE OF THE ACTION

This is a statewide class action which challenges the alleged refusal by officials of the Florida Department of Corrections to permit inmates in the Department's penal institutions who profess adherence to the Hebrew Israelite faith to receive the religious literature of that faith and to engage in the practice of the Hebrew Israelite religion in the manner allowed to inmate members of other religious groups.

The plaintiff class, as certified by the Court's Order of January 2, 1986 is defined as:

All persons currently confined, or who will be confined in the future, in institutions operated by Florida's Department of Corrections and who are members of, or seek to learn about, the Hebrew Israelite faith and who desire to receive and discuss religious literature prepared by the Temple of Love, and who have been denied the opportunity to receive such religious literature, discuss such religious beliefs with other individuals, and worship according to the tenets of the Hebrew Israelite faith.

Count I of the plaintiffs' Amended Complaint challenges, on First Amendment grounds, the Department of Corrections' refusal to permit those inmates who profess to follow the Hebrew Israelite faith from receiving religious books and pamphlets published by the Temple of Love, which is the Miami headquarters of the sect. Count I further alleges that the defendants have prevented the plaintiffs from enjoying the free exercise of their religion, by prohibiting worship services, prayer meetings, observance of dietary laws, and the wearing of religious symbols.

In Count II, the plaintiff class claims that their rights to equal protection and due process of law have been abridged by the procedures utilized by the defendants, under color of state regulations, in circumscribing the plaintiffs' religious practice in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

FINDINGS OF FACT AND CONCLUSIONS OF LAW

I. Findings of Fact

Procedural History

1. On August 5, 1983, Robert Lee Lawson, then an inmate at Hendry Correctional Institution, filed a pro se verified complaint in this Court pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 suing Louie L. Wainwright, Secretary, Florida Department of Corrections, C.W. Sprouse, Superintendent at Hendry, L.G. Stephens, Educational Supervisor, and Stephen Spencer, the prison chaplain.

2. The complaint charged, inter alia, that the plaintiff was a black Jew and a member of the Temple of Love, and that the plaintiff was informed on June 28, 1983 that religious literature addressed to plaintiff from the Temple of Love was being returned by the Hendry prison chaplain. The complaint sought declaratory, injunctive and monetary relief.

3. On March 12, 1985, plaintiff Lawson, now represented by counsel, filed his First Amended Complaint, naming Secretary Louie L. Wainwright, Chaplaincy Services Coordinator William S. Counselman, C.W. Sprouse, Paul Coburn and Stepen Spencer as defendants.¹ The Amended Complaint sought, inter alia, declaratory and injunctive relief on behalf of the class members and damages only as to plaintiff Robert Lee Lawson.

4. Defendants' Motions to Dismiss and for Summary Judgment were denied on October 9, 1985. They filed their Answer on October 25, 1985.

5. On April 12, 1985, Lawrence Jones, an inmate at the Dade Correctional Institution, moved to join as a party plaintiff or to intervene. On October 9, the Court permitted Lawrence Jones to join as a party plaintiff.

6. After an evidentiary hearing the Court, on January 2, 1986, certified this cause as a class action, defining the plaintiff class as described above.

7. There are currently 31 correctional institutions under the control and supervision of the Florida Department of Corrections. Evidence presented to the Court indicates that the number of inmates within those institutions who are either practicing Hebrew Israelites or have expressed a desire to learn about the religion is between 75 and 100.²

8. Robert Lee Lawson was released from incarceration in May, 1985 and is no longer a member of the class. His complaint for monetary damages against the defendants pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, originally Count III of the Amended Complaint in this cause, has been severed from this class action which seeks only declaratory and injunctive relief.

The Court's Findings

9. The parties to this class action have stipulated to the fact that the Hebrew Israelite faith is a bona fide religion. It has existed in splintered fashion since early in the twentieth century. The headquarters of the sect is the Temple of Love, located in Miami, Florida, and it was founded in about 1981. From this location, Yahweh ben Yahweh, who was formerly known as Moses Israel, presides as the leader of the Hebrew Israelite faithful. Among the facilities housed within the Temple is a printing complex, through which the organization prints and distributes copies of books and religious tracts which set out the tenets and history of the sect.

10. The Hebrew Israelite faith, as developed in the literature distributed from the Temple of Love³, is directed at black Americans, although there appears to be no explicit exclusion from membership by other races. The religion teaches that all blacks living in the United States are descendants of the "lost tribe of Israel", which, it is claimed, settled in biblical times on the west coast of Africa, only to be forcibly dispersed and removed to the Western Hemisphere by the slave trade of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

Yahweh ben Yahweh, writing as Moses Israel, further instructs his followers that white society and white-dominated Jewish and Christian mainline churches have deliberately deceived the American blacks, since their introduction to this continent, by concealing from them their true heritage as Black Hebrew Israelites. This historical/theological concept is supported in the literature by selective, and highly edited, quotations from the Hebrew Israelite Holy Bible.⁴

By means of limited biblical quotations, often wholly rewritten, interspersed throughout the remainder of the Hebrew Israelite literature, Yahweh ben Yahweh teaches his followers that God is black, that Moses, Abraham, Jesus Christ, and all other important biblical figures were black, and that Yahweh ben Yahweh himself is the present incarnation of the god Yahweh. Among the practical tenets, or laws, of the faith are the belief that the Bible forbids a man to shave his beard, proscribes the use of illegal drugs and the practice of homosexuality, and requires adherence to dietary laws which forbid the eating of pork products. As do most religions, this one admonishes the faithful that prayer, study and adherence to the laws of the church are necessary to a proper life.

11. A central tenet of the subject religion, and one that is promoted in many of the Hebrew Israelite publications, is the belief that the "white man", in a collective sense, is the enemy of the black race, and that black people have been punished by God for their failure to adhere to the commands of Yahweh by being subjugated by oppressive white rule. Thus, a repeated message of these materials is that white society has continually mistreated black Americans since their arrival as slaves, and that the god Yahweh, through the messianic figure of Yahweh ben Yahweh, offers the faithful salvation at some future time by leading his followers back to their homeland, Israel.

12. The publications of the Temple of Love which have been refused admittance by chaplains or other officials at various facilities of the Florida Department of Corrections consist of the following items, all of which were introduced in evidence at the trial of this cause:

Plaintiffs' Exhibit # 4—The Holy Bible

This publication consists of a standard, edited King James Bible, to which six prefatory pages have been added, together with eighty-six titled illustrations. While most of these drawings serve to simply illustrate that various Biblical characters were black persons, several depict either acts of atrocity (e.g., an illustration of the mutilation and killing, by white men, of a pregnant black woman and her fetus entitled "Blacks Hate Whites Forever" included at page 120 of this 1,170-page text) or constitute disparagement of so-called "false religions" (at page 1068, a mocking caricature of the Roman Catholic Pope entitled "The First Beast".)

Plaintiffs' Exhibit # 5—You Are Not a Nigger—Yahweh, God of Gods

In this, the most polemical of the works which the defendants have excluded from the various prisons, author Moses Israel presents "the world's best kept secret"

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