Plaintiff alleges that Muslim inmates sued the ODRC seeking accommodation of their religious dietary restrictions. He contends Gary Mohr issued a statement on May 1, 2011 indicating the ODRC settled this lawsuit, and as part of the settlement, agreed to eliminate pork from all meals served to Ohio prison inmates. Plaintiff asserts that this part of the agreement violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment, subjects him to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment, denies him substantive and procedural due process, and denies him Equal Protection.
The plaintiff is James Ed Rivers, an inmate. ODRC is the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, and Gary Mohr is ODRC’s director. The lawsuit contends that the permanently eliminating of pork from the menu is tantamount to establishing Islam as an official religion. ODRC countered that eliminating pork was more practical than creating separate menus, and that Islam isn’t the only religion that specifically bans pork (um… can anybody name three?).
Let’s just ignore the “cruel and unusual” aspect.
The United States District Court Northern District of Ohio ruled on this lawsuit on April 5, essentially that Rivers has no constitutional right to eat pork, nor any nutritional need, and therefore wasn’t being harmed by pork-free menu.
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Forget unconstitutional, it’s plain unfair. Why do the Muslims get to have their dietary restrictions accommodated in so complete a fashion? What about Jews? What about vegans? What about people with peanut allergies? What about people with celiac disease?
People who would actually become seriously ill and/or die from certain foods are accommodated (at least here in Canada), because pooping out one’s intestinal lining or choking to death in horrible agony usually count as “cruel and unusual punishment”.
Additionally, many prisons (in the U.S.) do provide kosher meals to accommodate religiously observant Jews. And kosher meals are substantially more expensive for the prison, while eliminating pork is free.
I doubt many prisons accommodate vegans, but accommodating religion is, rightly or wrongly, usually assigned a higher priority than accommodating non-religious ethical requirements.
Prisoners who have misbehaved may be served “nutraloaf”, which is all the elements of a meal mashed into one dish. The law requires that prisoners be fed; it doesn’t require that the prisoners like the food.
I didn’t say that prisons were required to carry out these accommodations (although the claim that they’re legally required to isn’t frivolous). I said that they sometimes do. I was responding to Powers’ comment, which asked why Muslims get these special accommodations that other groups don’t by noting, as Charlene did, that other groups often do get these accommodations.
I agree with Powers. It isn’t “unconstitutional” but I don’t think the should have necessarily eliminated it.
But, on the other hand, giving prisoners a “choice” of meals (with the exception of perhaps death row inmates) seems a bit more than they really deserve. They are in there for a reason and that reason shouldn’t really allow them to get comfortable.
Jews don’t eat pork, nor do the Buddhist sects which are vegetarian. I doubt either are large portions of the prison population.
Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and Rastas. Is there some kind of prize for knowing the answer?
also 7th Day Adventists and some African Orthodox Christians.
He only asked for three.
There are plenty of cases where institutional food services make blanket changes for the sake of expediency; one of the better-known examples is nut allergies, in which a single case of a peanut allergy in a flight passenger list leads some airlines to use peanut-free snacks for the entire flight. Eating tasteless crackers is hardly a reason to sue for freedom of religion, but neither is a pork-free diet.
There’s no Constitutional right to eat pork. While there might be an argument that restricting an entire prison population to, say, bread and water only could be considered cruel and unusual, simply avoiding a single form of meat hardly seems extreme.
Aside from the three religions Yellojkt listed, there are a few other Christian and Christian-ish religions and sects who’ve adopted Kashrut-ish prohibitions on pig meat, such as the Seventh-Day Adventists, and, apparently, the Orthodox Church of Ethiopia.
In general, the more interesting question isn’t the establishment of a religion so much as the free expression of religion. The interesting question is whether the prison was required to accommodate the no-pork diet of the Muslim inmates. Personally, I think that, whether they were REQUIRED to or not, it was a good idea — religion can be a tool that people can use toward rehabilitation, and respecting people’s religion can go a long way toward making them think that maybe they should respect society.
As far as Jews in prisons go, in some cases, outside charitable organizations have been known to provide Kosher meals to inmates.
Rivers and others are being forced to adhere to the dietary restrictions of others’ religion. Muslims view pork as unclean, and to accomodate their sensibilties, everyone must have these religious dietary restrictions imposed upon them.
Rivers should have made the claim that his religious rights were being violated. In the Christian Bible, we read “Everything God has created is good, and no food is to be rejected, provided if is received with thanksgiving: the WORD OF GOD and prayer make it holy.” (1Timothy 4:4, NJB). Pork, therefore, is a “clean” meat, according to the Christian God, and the Ohioan prison system, in pandering to Muslims, denied Christian prisoners the opportunity to exercise their religion.
That argument isn’t a winner, and here’s why:
The law requires that prisoners be fed, clothed and housed. If you offer a prisoner something as “food” that is contradictory to their religious dietary restrictions, you haven’t really offered them “food”, even if another prisoner would be happy to have it. You’ve offered them a choice between violating their religion and starving to death.
Now, we get your claim that the religious beliefs of another inmate require that he eat anything, and the prison system says “you can have anything, except (___).” They can eat whatever is offered.
Let’s look at it a different way. Prisoners who happen to be Rastafarian are routinely denied access to marijuana, which is sacred to their religion; native Americans who have peyote in their religious practices are similarly limited. Not only are they limited in these practices in prison, but following these practices outside of prison can get them put INTO prison.
But eating pork is not a requirement of Christianity. Also, the verse says that “no food is to be rejected”, not that any food is to be eaten. By refusing to eat non-pork meals (if that’s what he’s doing) he’s violating that verse more than the prison is by not offering pork.
By this argument, Ohio is also persecuting Christians by not serving crickets, dormice, rattlesnakes, bald eagles, and kittens.
I note from a quick Google search that this inmate also sued once because prison officials took away his second pillow. And he sued an inmate (and, originally, the prison as well) under civil rights law because the other inmate allegedly talked smack about Powers.
So, filing frivolous lawsuits is apparently how he whiles away his time inside.
I remember when school lunches on Friday consisted of fish and macaroni and cheese. I never thought about why the meals were such until recently. Ah well.
In many places when I was growing up, Friday was pizza day in school lunch. (Or, as Strong Bad described it in a Teen Girl Squad comic, “a breadtangle of pizza”.)
Which has no meat in it. Because the requirement wasn’t “fish on Fridays,” it was “no meat on Fridays”.
You can insult five major religions by eating a hot dog on Friday.