Michigan inmate likely to win religious freedom suit

A magistrate judge of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan is recommending that an inmate at Ryan Correctional Facility in Detroit have his motion for summary judgment granted in a lawsuit he filed against the Michigan Department of Corrections for declaring his religion to be a gang and outlawing his practice of that religion and his communication with other members of the religion while incarcerated.

Magistrate Judge R. Steven Whalen, whose job is to evaluate a case and make recommendations to the U.S. District Judge on how he should rule, issued a report recommending that the Nation of Gods and Earths / Five Percenters (NGE) be delisted as a Security Threat Group (STG) by the Michigan prison authorities and that Dion Hardaway, the plaintiff, and other members of this religion be given the right to practice and study their religion while in prison.

The suit was brought under a federal law called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), which forbids the government from imposing a “substantial burden” on the religious free exercise of any inmate unless it can show that the policy being challenged is the “least restrictive means” of achieving a “compelling governmental interest.”

The Michigan Department of Corrections claims that the NGE, an offshoot of Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam, is just a religious cover for gang activity and argues that it is necessary for prison security that their material be prohibited and its adherents prevented from communicating with one another.

Whalen rejected that argument, saying it was based primarily on anecdotal evidence that a certain number of NGE members had been associated with a known gang.

Nor is the fact that some members of NGE belong to gangs, or engage in disruptive or incitive words or actions, sufficient to equate the group as a whole with gangs such as the Bloods. History is replete with examples of religions that have followers who embrace both the sacred and the profane…

Moreover, as in Marria, the MDOC’s reliance on this anectodal evidence appears to be more of a post-hoc rationalization than the true reason for designating the NGE as a Security Threat Group.

Judge Avern Cohn will now issue a final ruling in the case, which is likely to endorse the reasoning of the magistrate judge. Rarely are the recommendations of the magistrate judge not followed in such suits. The magistrate judge’s full report is below.

Hardaway-v-Haggerty-8-09