Update:
A federal district court in Oregon recently ruled that secular humanist prisoners have equal right to organize discussions and group meetings focused on their beliefs and ideologies like theistic prisoners do.
Senior District Judge Ancer Haggerty said prison officials had in fact violated Jason Holden’s constitutional rights as guaranteed by the First and Fifth amendments. He also went on to declare secular humanism is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes.
He ruled, “[t]he court finds that Secular Humanism is a religion for Establishment Clause purposes… the touchstone of the Establishment Clause was ‘the principle that the First Amendment mandates government neutrality between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.’[McCreary County v. ACLU], 545 U.S. 844, 860 (2005) (emphasis added). Thus, whether Humanism is a religion or a nonreligion, the Establishment Clause applies.”
Simply put, the Establishment Clause protects Muslim and Christian prisoners who wish to organize meetings that promote faith in God and it so it also protects atheists or secular humanists who want to organize similar meetings to promote the opposite view.
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After an Oregon prisoner accused the United States Bureau of Prisons of discriminating between humanists and inmates of other faiths, American Humanist Association helped Jason Michael Holden file a lawsuit against the federal prison system at the United States District Court in July. The move came three months after the Army officially announced humanism to be a religious option.
Holden, who is serving his term at the medium-security prison in Sheridan, alleged that the Bureau of Prisons was violating his constitutional rights by preventing him from forming a humanist group that would allow him and other atheists to share their commonly held beliefs.
“Humanism is Holden's religion, which comforts and guides him in the way that religions traditionally provide such comfort and guidance. Seeing things through a Humanist lens creates within him a spiritual connection with the natural world. Humanism gives Holden inner peace and security and has helped him realize the natural gift of his life,” says the lawsuit.
The lawsuit points out how the federal prison allows inmates of different faith groups including Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism and Islam to create their own groups. Even sub-groups of certain faiths like Paganism have been allowed to form at the prison.
The humanism issue addressed by Holden recently has not come up earlier inside the state prison. According to officials from the Oregon Department of Corrections, humanist activists outside the prison have never made an official request to introduce their teachings inside the state’s prisons.
39-year-old Holden has alleged that the federal prison system’s decision to disallow him and his fellow atheist inmates from organizing a similar group as others violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The lawsuit includes names of the prison’s chaplain as well as the warden and accuses them of refusing to recognize humanism as an official religion.
Chris Burke, Federal prisons spokesperson in Washington said the Bureau of Prisons would refrain from responding to the allegations at this point, as the matter is already subjudice. Judge Ancer Haggerty granted an extended period to government lawyers so they could address the problem properly.
Photo Credits: WIkimedia
