This is true. It is also true that many prisoners are paranoid about their food and therefore want kosher food out of a misguided belief that it is especially safe for consumption.
That said, most of those cases arise after there is a kosher accommodation in place and other prisoners seek access to it. For example, in Guzzi v. Thompson, 2008 WL 2059321 (1st Cir. 2008) I argued on behalf of the Becket Fund as amicus against a misguided district court opinion that held that only Jewish prisoners could seek kosher dietary accommodations. Guzzi claimed to be "Orthodox Catholic" which he said required compliance with the rules of kashrus. The lower court said in effect "Catholics don't keep kosher" and dismissed the case. After oral argument at the First Circuit the Commonwealth unilaterally decided to give Guzzi the kosher accommodation, presumably in an effort to preserve the lower court's decision from being vacated. So I would argue that the focus in the non-halachically-Jewish prisoner cases tends to be more (or should be) the sincerity of the prisoner rather than the exact contours of the kosher accommodation they are seeking. So far I don't think anybody has asked for glatt. ________________________________________ From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Friedman, Howard M. [howard.fried...@utoledo.edu] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 6:46 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Court upholds prison no-pork policy against EstablishmentClausechallenge You are right. Except many of the cases in which prisoners are requesting kosher food involve inmates who are not Jewish (at least in the halachic sense). E.g. many times Muslims, having no hope of getting halal food, request kosher food which is apparently an acceptable alternative under Shariah law. Or groups like the Hebrew Israelites request a kosher diet. It is not clear whether these kinds of religious requests are from prisoners who care about the same strictures as traditional Orthodox Jews do. Howard Friedman -----Original Message----- From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu on behalf of Eric Rassbach Sent: Thu 4/12/2012 11:39 AM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Court upholds prison no-pork policy against EstablishmentClausechallenge Chip is right that the supposedly inhumane methods of kosher/halal slaughter (something US law defines as humane, btw) is one of the main public justifications for banning the practice. But as our brief in the New Zealand kosher slaughter ban case pointed out -- http://www.becketfund.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/NZ-kosher-brief-FINAL.pdf -- more often than not this is pretext. For example, this was the same justification the anti-Semites of the 1930s used for banning the practice in several European countries. As we point out in our brief, one of the first things the Nazis did upon taking power was to pass a law banning kosher slaughter, supposedly in order "to awaken and strengthen compassion as one of the highest moral values of the German people." I don't think it's too much of a stretch to guess that anti-Muslim sentiment may be a subterranean motivation for the humane practices argument in the Netherlands, France and elsewhere. The ironic part for me of the Mohr case was that my main experience of stand-alone prison pork bans is as a proposed "compromise" to settle kosher accommodation lawsuits. Of course pork bans don't work as a method of kosher accommodation, though prison administrators keep hoping that they do. In our now 6-year-old lawsuit against the Texas prison system (now on a return trip to the 5th Circuit), Texas at one point floated a pork ban as a solution, which only served to show that they didn't understand how kashrus works. Eric ________________________________________ From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu [religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Ira Lupu [icl...@law.gwu.edu] Sent: Thursday, April 12, 2012 10:39 AM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Court upholds prison no-pork policy against EstablishmentClause challenge I think that at least part of the objections in Europe to serving only halal meat in some restaurants involves objections to methods of halal animal slaughter which (like kosher slaughter) may not be consistent with European standards for humane treatment of animals in their use as food. "Halal only" means all diners are "complicit" in the that particular slaughtering process. On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 11:08 PM, Friedman, Howard M. <howard.fried...@utoledo.edu<mailto:howard.fried...@utoledo.edu>> wrote: It is interesting to compare reactions in Europe to similar situations. In 2010, French politicians strongly criticized a restaurant chain that decided to serve only halal meat in 8 of its restaurants with a large Muslim clientele. Agriculture Minister Bruno Le Maire said: "When they remove all the pork from a restaurant open to the public, I think they fall into communalism, which is against the principles and the spirit of the French republic." See: http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2010/02/french-politicians-criticize-restaurant.html In 2007 in Britain, a primary school in Kingsgate attempted to accommodate religious needs of its growing Muslim student body by serving only Halal meat in its lunch menus. A number of parents objected, arguing that the school was forcing their children to to conform to "someone else's culture." See http://religionclause.blogspot.com/2007/02/british-parents-protest-halal-menus-in.html Howard Friedman -----Original Message----- From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu<mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu> on behalf of Volokh, Eugene Sent: Wed 4/11/2012 7:46 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: RE: Court upholds prison no-pork policy against EstablishmentClause challenge I agree entirely; I mention this partly because I occasionally hear pork bans as examples of quintessential violations of the Establishment Clause, though I don't think they would be. To be sure, a general pork ban might have a different motivation than a prison decision not to serve pork. But at the same time even a general pork ban could certainly be an attempt to accommodate a religious group by minimizing the risk that its members will accidentally ingest pork (or that its members might be put in a position where their employment would require the handling or even sampling of pork). And just as the state of California is free to ban the sale of horsemeat for human consumption (as it did in 1998), so it should be free to ban the sale of pork - not that I'd ever endorse that as a policy matter! Eugene From: religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu<mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu> [mailto:religionlaw-boun...@lists.ucla.edu] On Behalf Of Ira Lupu Sent: Wednesday, April 11, 2012 4:32 PM To: Law & Religion issues for Law Academics Subject: Re: Court upholds prison no-pork policy against Establishment Clause challenge Is this outcome surprising in any way? Does anyone on the list believe that the court got this wrong? (I certainly don't). If Congress overrode HHS and eliminated pregnancy prevention services from mandatory coverage by employers under the Affordable Care Act, wouldn't the analysis be just the same (imposition of a uniform policy to avoid religious conflict, avoid any need to create controversial exceptions for religious entities, avoid piece-meal litigation, and ease administration of the overall scheme), even though the impetus for change derived from a demand by some for religious accommodation? On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 6:48 PM, Volokh, Eugene <vol...@law.ucla.edu<mailto:vol...@law.ucla.edu><mailto:vol...@law.ucla.edu>> wrote: River v. Mohr (N.D. Ohio Apr. 5, 2012), http://volokh.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/RiversvMohr.pdf . Eugene _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu<mailto:Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu><mailto:Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. -- Ira C. Lupu F. Elwood & Eleanor Davis Professor of Law George Washington University Law School 2000 H St., NW Washington, DC 20052 (202)994-7053<tel:%28202%29994-7053> My SSRN papers are here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=181272#reg _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu<mailto:Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu> To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. -- Ira C. Lupu F. Elwood & Eleanor Davis Professor of Law George Washington University Law School 2000 H St., NW Washington, DC 20052 (202)994-7053 My SSRN papers are here: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=181272#reg _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others. _______________________________________________ To post, send message to Religionlaw@lists.ucla.edu To subscribe, unsubscribe, change options, or get password, see http://lists.ucla.edu/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/religionlaw Please note that messages sent to this large list cannot be viewed as private. Anyone can subscribe to the list and read messages that are posted; people can read the Web archives; and list members can (rightly or wrongly) forward the messages to others.