WASHINGTON - The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to decide whether the Arkansas prison system can ban inmates from growing beards for religious reasons.
Inmate Gregory Houston Holt, who goes by the Muslim name Abdul Maalik Muhammad, challenged the Arkansas Department of Correction’s policy under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
That federal law requires prison officials to show a compelling security reason for limiting religious practices and to use the least restrictive method of limiting practices.
In June, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis agreed with Arkansas prison officials’ justification that inmates with beards could more easily hide contraband such as razors, homemade darts or cellphone memory chips.
Holt’s attorney, University of Virginia law professor Douglas Laycock, said by phone Monday that 43 other states either allow all inmates to have beards or allow beards for religious reasons.
“Arkansas doesn’t really have a very good reason for being one of the seven holdouts,” he said.
Laycock said the court likely took up the case because of conflicting decisions from other appeals courts.
Holt asked the court to consider the case in a 15-page handwritten petition filed in September called “a writ of certiorari in forma pauperis,” which allowed him to petition the court without paying fees.
Laycock said it is unusual for the court to hear such a handwritten request.
“There are other [cases], but it doesn’t happen very often. He had no legal help; he did a very good job,” Laycock said.
Holt was once a law student, he said.
The court likely will hear the case, Holt v. Hobbs, when it returns for its next term in October.
Aaron Sadler, spokesman for Arkansas Attorney General Dustin McDaniel, said the office will defend the department. He said he expects the case to be set for oral arguments in the fall.
“The attorney general is looking forward to arguing to the court that the Arkansas Department of Correction’s regulation is constitutional,” he said.
Under the department’s policy, adopted in 1998, inmates are not allowed to have facial hair except for “a neatly trimmed mustache that does not extend beyond the corner of the mouth or over the lip.”
The only exception is for inmates with certain dermatological conditions, who may have a beard up to a quarter-inch long but must present documentation about the condition upon demand.
In November, the U.S. Supreme Court granted Holt permission to have a half-inch beard as the case makes its way through the system.
Holt argues in his court filing that Arkansas’ policy violates his belief that “Muslim males are not to shave their beards.” He states that refusing to allow a religious exception to the policy forces inmates “to either obey their religious beliefs and face disciplinary action on the one hand, or violate those beliefs in order to acquiesce.”
Holt, 38, is serving a life sentence in the Varner Supermax Unit in Lincoln County. In 2010, he was convicted in Pulaski County Circuit Court of aggravated residential burglary and first-degree battery. Prosecutors said he cut his girlfriend’s throat and stabbed her in the chest at her mobile home in Little Rock.
At his trial, jurors learned that Holt had written letters describing himself as an “American Taliban” threatening a deadly “jihad” in the courtroom if the verdict in his trial went “south.”
He also served jail time for threatening President George W. Bush’s daughters.
Arkansas, Pages 7 on 03/04/2014