How far federal and state governments in America must bend in their applications of general rules in order to accommodate religious practices has always been a fascinating issue. On Tuesday, the United States Supreme Court rendered a decision in Holt v. Hobbs and laid down important standards for construing certain legal protections in the prison context that will impact on such rules in the civil sector as well.
In this particular case, the issue was whether the Arkansas prison system could prohibit, for security reasons, a devout Muslim’s maintaining a beard of a certain length as a matter of religious practice.
Suffice it to say that the court appears to have substantially broadened the zone of protection for religious practices and also set exacting standards for the authorities to meet in order to justify any infringements on those practices.
Because of the obvious import the case had for religious Jews, a broad coalition of Orthodox Jewish groups joined in a friend of the court brief urging the justices to broaden the protections for religious practice. The brief was authored by noted constitutional litigator Nathan Lewin and, especially noteworthy, provided a distinctly Jewish perspective, extensively discussing Jewish sources such as Maimonides, the Chofetz Chaim, and the Lubavitcher Rebbe.