Law Commons^™

Rluipa: A Double-Faced Problem And A Proposed Return To Turner V. Safely Modified, Brett J. Fleisher

Brett J Fleisher

The metes and bounds of religious freedom in our increasingly secular nation remain undefined and shifting. Although the First Amendment to the United States Constitution provides two forms of constitutional protection for religion, Congress added an additional statutory safeguard for religion in the form of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (“RLUIPA”). This Comment argues that applying strict scrutiny to the religious claims of prisoners has become problematic in practice under both the Free Exercise Clause and the Establishment Clause. The Free Exercise Clause problem is that the statutory vehicle of RLUIPA enables religious officials to …