New York City’s Department of Correction does not have to change the manner in which it provides halal food to satisfy the particular objections of a handful of Muslim inmates at Rikers Island, a federal judge has ruled.
Southern District Judge Lewis Kaplan (See Profile), citing the $200 million that the city has spent implementing a meals program to accommodate the religious dietary requirements of Muslim inmates, turned aside the claims of Michael Wesley that his First and Fourteenth Amendment right to free exercise of religion was violated by the combined cleaning of halal and non-halal food-preparation service equipment.
Kaplan also said that Wesley’s rights under the Religious Land Use and Incarcerated Persons Act was not violated in Wesley v. City of New York, 05 Civ. 5833.
“No one’s religious beliefs may be deemed correct or incorrect because they correspond or do not correspond to those of other members of a particular religion,” Kaplan said. “But neither the Constitution nor the RLUIPA requires that jails and prisons accommodate each and every set of dietary requirements, even where sincerely held, regardless of the cost and regardless of the prevalence of such requirements in the relevant population.”
The seven-year-old lawsuit was brought by Wesley pro se and the bulk of the claims were disposed of in 2010, leaving only the claim on food service under the U.S. Constitution and the RLUIPA.
Kaplan held a bench trial last month and issued his opinion in the case on Aug. 10.
Wesley claimed that Rikers served haraam, or non-halal food, and that some inmates placed haraam on trays used for serving halal food. He also claimed the contamination was made worse because the trays were combined in a commercial washing machine.
Kaplan said he assumed, “without so finding, that plaintiff’s beliefs with respect to the ‘contamination’ of the Halal trays by virtue of the placement of haraam commissary items on them and the washing of those trays in a dishwasher also used for non-Halal meal trays are sincerely held and religious.”
He also assumed “again, without so finding, that the DOC practices placed a substantial burden on the free exercise of plaintiff’s religion,” leaving the court to decide whether the city “established that the burden on the plaintiff’s free exercise was justified.”
Wesley, the judge said, acknowledged at trial that the only course for the city consistent with the free exercise of his religion would have been to provide him with “halal sealed meal[s]” prepared in outside facilities, implying, the judge said, that his requirements would also have been met by the establishment of separate food service facilities at Rikers.
Kaplan noted that, on average, some 5,700 inmates requested halal food from 2002 to 2005 and the city provided approximately 17,100 halal meals per day during that period.
He noted that the Department of Correction looked into having an outside vendor provide prepackaged halal meals but could not find one who could supply the volume and variety of halal meals required.
Wesley, he said, was essentially leaving the city with two options. One was to provide him and a handful of inmates food prepared off-site to meet his specifications while the vast majority of inmates had no problem with the way halal food was prepared. The second option was to institute a whole new system of food preparation.
“The DOC was or would have been justified in rejecting the first of these options—providing plaintiff alone or a handful of inmates with food prepared by an outside vendor that met their personal definitions of Halal,” he said. “The provision of meals prepared to suit the particular wishes of very small groups of inmates would be extremely burdensome in an institution serving thousands of meals per day.”
He continue, “Moreover, the provision of individualized food service options likely would be disruptive in a prison environment. Just as some airline passengers presumably have requested special meals because the passengers preferred them to standard fare and not for any religious or medical reason, some inmates at Rikers likely would act in a comparable manner.”
Crediting the testimony of a correction department official, the judge said the “provision of meals to suit the particular preference of individual or small numbers of inmates” could “lead to a proliferation of demands for special food options, many of which would be grounded in personal preference rather than in any religious concern.”
As for the second option, building entirely separate facilities, the judge said that didn’t require much discussion.
Rikers has had a substantial Muslim population for years and has designed a food service program to meet the desires and beliefs of that population, he said.
“Yet, with the exception of plaintiff and a handful of others, no one has advanced the unique complaints made here,” he said. “The City’s interest in avoiding an added expense in the millions, tens of millions, or even more to remedy a situation that, so far as the record discloses, has troubled almost no one is entitled to substantial weight.”
Assistant Corporation Counsel Martin Bowe represented the city.