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Nature of Suit Code: 440
Nature of Suit: Other Civil Rights
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued February 3, 2006 Decided March 28, 2006

No. 05-5031

RANDY WEBMAN AND

LARRY ROZEN,

APPELLANTS

v.

FEDERAL BUREAU OF PRISONS, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 03cv00172)

Lee Boothby argued the cause and filed the briefs for

appellants.

Heather Graham-Oliver, Assistant U.S. Attorney, argued

the cause for appellees. With her on the brief were Kenneth L.

Wainstein, U.S. Attorney, and Michael J. Ryan, Assistant U.S.

Attorney. R. Craig Lawrence, Assistant U.S. Attorney, entered

an appearance.

Before: SENTELLE, HENDERSON and TATEL, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge SENTELLE.

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Concurring opinion filed by Circuit Judge TATEL.

SENTELLE, Circuit Judge: Appellants, former inmates of

the Federal Bureau of Prisons, sued the Bureau and several of its

personnel (collectively, “BOP”), alleging religion-based

discrimination in violation of the Religious Freedom Restoration

Act of 1993 (“RFRA”), Pub. L. No. 103-141, 107 Stat. 1488, 42

U.S.C. §§ 2000bb to 2000bb-4. The District Court dismissed

their damages claims as barred by sovereign immunity, and

plaintiffs brought this appeal. Agreeing that RFRA does not

provide the kind of clear and unequivocal waiver of sovereign

immunity governing precedent requires, we affirm. 

I. Background

Randy Webman and Larry Rozen were imprisoned for fraud

and other offenses at the Federal Correctional Complex in

Coleman, Florida. Rozen was released in 2001, Webman in

2004. On February 3, 2003, they filed a complaint in the United

States District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging

violations of RFRA and the First Amendment’s Free Exercise

clause. 

According to their complaint, Webman and Rozen “are

practicing Jews who adhere to the religious obligations and

dietary laws of their faith.” While imprisoned, they allegedly

suffered an array of religion-based discrimination. Inter alia,

the BOP allegedly denied Webman and Rozen access to rabbis,

served them non-kosher meals, refused to afford them an

opportunity to pray regularly, and countenanced or caused

sundry forms of religious harassment. The complaint sought

injunctive relief, compensatory damages, and reasonable costs

and attorney’s fees.

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BOP responded to the complaint with a motion to dismiss,

styled in the alternative as a motion for summary judgment. On

March 21, 2004, the District Court granted the motion in part.

It dismissed all damages claims as barred by sovereign

immunity, and Rozen’s claims for injunctive relief because his

release from prison mooted them. Webman remained

incarcerated, however, and the court held that his equitable

claims raised genuine issues of material fact. These remaining

claims were short-lived, though: Soon after Webman was

released from prison in September 2004, the court found them

moot as well. Webman and Rozen now appeal only the District

Court’s judgment on the damages claim, arguing that the court

erred in its ruling on sovereign immunity under RFRA. 

II. Analysis

A. RFRA

In Employment Division v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), the

Supreme Court held that “neutral, generally applicable laws may

be applied to religious practices even when not supported by a

compelling government interest.” City of Boerne v. Flores, 521

U.S. 507, 514 (1997). In so doing, the Smith Court held that the

so-called Sherbert test does not govern such neutral, generally

applicable laws. That test, set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374

U.S. 398 (1963), involved a balancing process in which the court

would ask whether a statutory or regulatory prohibition

“substantially burdened a religious practice and, if it did,

whether the burden was justified by a compelling government

interest.” City of Boerne, 521 U.S. at 513. 

After the Smith decision, Congress enacted RFRA for the

express purpose of restoring the Sherbert Free Exercise test. See

42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b)(1); Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita

Beneficente Uniao do Vegetal, 2006 WL 386374, at *4 (U.S.

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Feb. 21, 2006). Under RFRA, “[g]overnment shall not

substantially burden a person’s exercise of religion even if the

burden results from a rule of general applicability,” unless the

government can demonstrate that the application of the burden

“is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest” and “is

the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling

governmental interest.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(a), (b). 

RFRA’s judicial relief provision is couched in broad terms:

“A person whose religious exercise has been burdened in

violation of this section may assert that violation as a claim or

defense in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief

against a government.” Id. § 2000bb-1(c) (emphasis added). In

its definition section, RFRA states: “[T]he term ‘government’

includes a branch, department, agency, instrumentality, and

official (or other person acting under color of law) of the United

States . . . .” Id. § 2000bb-2(1). 

The Supreme Court ruled in City of Boerne that Congress

lacks the constitutional authority to enforce RFRA against the

states. 521 U.S. at 536. Congress does, however, have the

power to enforce RFRA against the federal government. See

Holy Land Found. for Relief & Dev. v. Ashcroft, 333 F.3d 156,

167 (D.C. Cir. 2003) (“[W]e have held that without doubt ‘the

portion [of RFRA] applicable to the federal government . . .

survived the Supreme Court’s decision striking down the statute

as applied to the States.’”) (quoting Henderson v. Kennedy, 265

F.3d 1072, 1073 (D.C. Cir. 2001)), cert. denied, 540 U.S. 1218

(2004).

B. Sovereign Immunity

“It is axiomatic that the United States may not be sued

without its consent and that the existence of consent is a

prerequisite for jurisdiction.” United States v. Mitchell, 463

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BOP’s brief—in addition to offering little beyond conclusory

assertions that RFRA did not waive sovereign immunity—lifts almost

an entire paragraph from Tinsley v. Pittari, 952 F. Supp. 384, 389

(N.D. Tex. 1996), reproducing it twice (with only minor alterations)

U.S. 206, 212 (1983); see also United States v. Sherwood, 312

U.S. 584, 586 (1941) (“The United States, as sovereign, is

immune from suit save as it consents to be sued, and the terms

of its consent to be sued in any court define that court’s

jurisdiction to entertain suit.”) (citations omitted). The federal

government may waive its sovereign immunity by statute, but

that waiver “must be unequivocally expressed in statutory text.”

Lane v. Peña, 518 U.S. 187, 192 (1996) (citing United States v.

Nordic Village, Inc., 503 U.S. 30, 33-34, 37 (1992)); see also

United States v. Mitchell, 445 U.S. 535, 538 (1980); United

States v. King, 395 U.S. 1, 4 (1969). Waivers may not be

implied. Irwin v. Dep’t of Veterans Affairs, 498 U.S. 89, 95

(1990); Soriano v. United States, 352 U.S. 270, 276 (1957).

And courts must “strictly construe[]” any waiver of sovereign

immunity, “in terms of its scope, in favor of the sovereign.”

Lane, 518 U.S. at 192 (“To sustain a claim that the Government

is liable for awards of monetary damages, the waiver of

sovereign immunity must extend unambiguously to such

monetary claims.”) (citation omitted); Library of Cong. v. Shaw,

478 U.S. 310, 318 (1986); Lehman v. Nakshian, 453 U.S. 156,

161 (1981); McMahon v. United States, 342 U.S. 25, 27 (1951);

Sherwood, 312 U.S. at 590 (collecting cases). 

C. Application to this Case

Webman and Rozen do not dispute that the BOP is

protected by sovereign immunity and therefore immune to suit

absent a waiver. Thus, the only issue before us is whether

RFRA’s waiver of sovereign immunity extends to monetary

damages.1

 We review the matter de novo. Loughlin v. United

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in its brief, without attribution, in violation of Fed. R. App. P.

28(a)(9)(A) and D.C. Cir. R. 28(d). See Appellee’s Br. at 7, 10. 

States, 393 F.3d 155, 162 (D.C. Cir. 2004). 

Appellants attempt to find an unequivocal waiver in

RFRA’s reference to “government.” Appellants’ Br. at 12-13.

Because RFRA authorizes “appropriate relief against a

government,” 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-1(c) (italics added), and

“government” includes instrumentalities of the federal

government, id. § 2000bb-2(1), Webman and Rozen claim that

RFRA waives the federal government’s sovereign immunity in

its entirety. Not so. No one disputes that BOP and other arms

of the federal government may be sued for at least some forms

of relief under RFRA. The question is whether permissible

forms include money damages. A waiver of sovereign

immunity for some type of remedy does not necessarily extend

to suits for damages. See Lane, 518 U.S. at 196 (“It is plain that

Congress is free to waive the Federal Government’s sovereign

immunity against liability without waiving its immunity from

monetary damages awards.”); Nordic Village, 503 U.S. at 34

(“Though [a bankruptcy statute], too, waives sovereign

immunity, it fails to establish unambiguously that the waiver

extends to monetary claims.”). 

The dispositive question is whether RFRA’s reference to

“appropriate relief” includes monetary damages. On its face,

RFRA’s reference to “appropriate relief” is not the “sort of

unequivocal waiver that our precedents demand,” Lane, 518

U.S. at 198, because that broad term is susceptible to more than

one interpretation. In some contexts, “appropriate relief” might

include damages. Cf. West v. Gibson, 527 U.S. 212, 222-23

(1999) (holding that Title VII’s reference to “appropriate

remedies” contemplates compensatory damages where a

statutory cross-reference explicitly authorizes them). However,

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While no appellate courts have squarely addressed the issue

before us, at least five district courts have concluded that RFRA’s

textual reference to “appropriate relief” is not an unequivocal waiver

of sovereign immunity for damages. See Lepp v. Gonzales, 2005 WL

1867723, at *8 (N.D. Cal. Aug. 2, 2005); Pineda-Morales v. De Rosa,

2005 WL 1607276, at *13 (D.N.J. July 6, 2005); Jama v. INS, 343 F.

Supp. 2d 338, 372-73 (D.N.J. 2004); Tinsley, 952 F. Supp. at 389;

Meyer v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons, 929 F. Supp. 10, 13-14 (D.D.C.

1996); cf. Commack Self-Serv. Kosher Meats Inc. v. New York, 954 F.

Supp. 65, 68-70 (E.D.N.Y. 1997); Rust v. Clarke, 851 F. Supp. 377,

380-81 (D. Neb. 1994); see also Mack v. O’Leary, 80 F.3d 1175, 1177

(7th Cir. 1996)(dictum) (referencing the “appropriate relief” language

and mentioning that “there is no indication of congressional intent to

abrogate the states’ Eleventh Amendment immunity from suit”),

vacated sub nom. O’Leary v. Mack, 522 U.S. 801 (1997). 

another plausible reading is that “appropriate relief” covers

equitable relief but not damages, given Congress’s awareness of

the importance of sovereign immunity and its silence in the

statute on the subject of damages. We cannot find an

unambiguous waiver in language this open-ended and equivocal.

Congress need not use magic words to waive sovereign

immunity, but the language it chooses must be unequivocal and

unambiguous. See Dep’t of Army v. Blue Fox, Inc., 525 U.S.

255, 261 (1999). RFRA’s text falls short on this standard.2

 We

therefore hold that RFRA does not waive the federal

government’s sovereign immunity for damages.

III. Conclusion

For the reasons stated above, the District Court’s dismissal

of Appellants’ claims for lack of jurisdiction is therefore

Affirmed.

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TATEL, Circuit Judge, concurring: Although I concur in the

court’s opinion, I write separately to explain why, even though

“[i]n some contexts, ‘appropriate relief’ might include

damages,” majority op. at 6, it does not when used in RFRA.

Of course, as the court points out, a critical factor in our

declining to read “appropriate relief” to include damages is our

obligation to construe waivers of sovereign immunity strictly,

and therefore to require Congress to authorize damages

unequivocally. See id. at 5. Thus, although appellants rightly

point out that the term “appropriate relief” ordinarily “confers

broad discretion on the Court” to fashion a remedy, Sch. Comm.

of the Town of Burlington, Mass. v. Dep’t of Educ., 471 U.S.

359, 369 (1985), such sweeping statements have no applicability

in the sovereign immunity context.

Turning to the statute before us, I believe that we cannot

rest on the general proposition that “appropriate relief” is

“susceptible to more than one interpretation.” Majority op. at 6.

Instead, because “Congress need not use magic words to waive

sovereign immunity,” id. at 7, we must determine whether the

term “appropriate relief” as used in this statute unequivocally

includes damages. In my view, it would if either (1) damages

would constitute the only appropriate remedy for the particular

harm at which the statute is aimed, or (2) Congress elsewhere

made clear that it considered damages to be the appropriate

remedy. Because RFRA falls into neither category, I agree that

its sovereign immunity waiver must be limited to equitable

relief.

To understand the first category, consider the following

hypothetical statute: “If a government official hits a person over

the head with a baseball bat, that person may file suit and obtain

appropriate relief against the government.” Interpreting such a

statute to authorize only equitable relief would make little sense:

what equitable relief could possibly remedy such a one-time

injury? It thus makes no difference that the hypothetical statute

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does not expressly authorize damages, for the type of injury the

statute addresses makes clear that damages are “appropriate.”

RFRA violations, in contrast, will often be ongoing, making

injunctive relief “appropriate.” For example, in this case

appellants originally sought an injunction requiring the prison to

accommodate their religious needs by revising the menu and

implementing a training and monitoring program for prison

staff. See also Gonzales v. O Centro Espirita Beneficente Uniao

do Vegetal, __ S. Ct. ___, 2006 WL 386374 (U.S. Feb. 21,

2006) (affirming grant of preliminary injunction under RFRA

for religious sect seeking to block enforcement of ban on use of

sacramental tea). The district court dismissed appellants’ claims

for injunctive relief only because those claims became moot

when appellants were released from prison. Webman v. Fed.

Bureau of Prisons, No. 03-172, slip op. at 11 (D.D.C. Mar. 21,

2004) (dismissing appellant Rozen’s claims as moot because he

was no longer incarcerated); Webman v. Fed. Bureau of Prisons,

No. 03-172, slip op. at 6-9 (D.D.C. Jan. 4, 2005) (dismissing

appellant Webman’s claims for same reason). Accordingly, I

see no indication that RFRA violations will ordinarily lend

themselves to monetary relief.

The Supreme Court invoked a version of the second

category referred to above in West v. Gibson, 527 U.S. 212

(1999). There, the Court considered the Equal Employment

Opportunity Commission’s authority to enforce Title VII of the

Civil Rights Act of 1964 against the federal government.

Enacted in 1972, the relevant provision authorized the EEOC to

enforce the prohibition on discrimination by the federal

government “through appropriate remedies, including

reinstatement or hiring of employees with or without back pay,

as will effectuate the policies of this section.” 42 U.S.C.

§ 2000e-16(b), quoted in West, 527 U.S. at 215. In 1991,

Congress amended Title VII to authorize awards of

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compensatory damages in certain circumstances against both

private parties and the government. Civil Rights Act of 1991,

Pub. L. No. 102-166, § 102, 105 Stat. 1071, 1072 (codified at 42

U.S.C. § 1981a). Although the 1991 amendment, the relevant

portion of which the Supreme Court labeled the “Compensatory

Damages Amendment (CDA),” West, 527 U.S. at 215, made

clear that courts could award compensatory damages, it made no

change to the provision authorizing the EEOC to enforce the

statute through “appropriate remedies.”

In West, the Supreme Court held that the EEOC had

authority to award compensatory damages against the

government. “After enactment of the 1991 CDA,” the Court

reasoned, “an award of compensatory damages is a ‘remedy’

that is ‘appropriate.’” Id. at 217. Recognizing that “ordinary

sovereign immunity presumptions may not apply” because

Congress made clear that courts (as distinguished from the

EEOC) could award damages, the Court nonetheless held that

“if we must apply a specially strict standard . . . , that standard

is met here.” Id. at 222. The Court went on to explain that “the

statutory language, taken together with statutory purposes,

history, and the absence of any convincing reason for denying

the EEOC the relevant power, produce evidence of a waiver that

satisfies the stricter standard.” Id. Again, although Title VII

contained no express authorization of damage awards, the

context made Congress’s intent apparent.

Unlike Title VII, RFRA nowhere makes clear that damages

are “appropriate” (at least when awarded against the

government, cf. 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-2 (including government

officials as well as the government itself in the term

“government”)). Indeed, RFRA’s quite limited purpose

suggests the contrary. Congress passed RFRA to provide the

claims and defenses that the Supreme Court held in Employment

Division, Department of Human Resources v. Smith, 494 U.S.

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872 (1990), were unavailable under the First Amendment’s Free

Exercise Clause. See 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb(b) (describing

RFRA’s purposes as “to restore the compelling interest test as

set forth in Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963) and

Wisconsin v. Yoder, 406 U.S. 205 (1972) and to guarantee its

application in all cases where free exercise of religion is

substantially burdened” and “to provide a claim or defense to

persons whose religious exercise is substantially burdened by

government”). Appellants point to no pre-Smith waiver of

sovereign immunity that authorized damages against the

government in Free Exercise cases, nor am I aware of one.

Because Congress enacted RFRA to return to a pre-Smith world,

a world in which damages were unavailable against the

government, “appropriate relief” is most naturally read to

exclude damages against the government. Thus, unlike Title

VII’s purpose, RFRA’s purpose does not “produce evidence of

a waiver” of sovereign immunity for damages claims, West, 527

U.S. at 222, much less evidence unequivocal enough to satisfy

the strict standard for waivers of sovereign immunity.

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