[DO NOT PUBLISH]

In the

United States Court of Appeals

For the Eleventh Circuit

____________________

No. 22-10023

Non-Argument Calendar

____________________

YUSEF MAISONET, 

Plaintiff-Appellant,

versus

COMMISSIONER, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF 

CORRECTIONS, 

ASSOCIATE COMMISSIONER, PLANS AND PROGRAMS, 

ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, 

PASTORAL PROGRAMS SUPERVISOR, ALABAMA 

DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, 

WARDEN, 

CHAPLAIN, ALABAMA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, 

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2 Opinion of the Court 22-10023

Defendants-Appellees.

____________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Southern District of Alabama

D.C. Docket No. 1:21-cv-00059-KD-MU

____________________

Before WILSON, GRANT, and ANDERSON, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM:

Yusef Maisonet is an imam who ministered to the religious 

needs of Dominique Ray and Nathaniel Woods, two Muslim men 

who were on death row in Alabama. Maisonet sought to attend 

these men’s executions to provide them religious counsel upon 

their deaths. Under Alabama’s execution protocols, Maisonet was 

prevented from being present in the execution chamber when Ray 

and Woods were executed. Maisonet now sues, claiming that his 

exclusion from the execution chamber on these two occasions 

violated Maisonet’s own Free Exercise rights, entirely independent 

from the rights of Ray and Woods. He seeks a declaration that 

Alabama’s execution protocols are unlawful, an injunction 

requiring state officials to let him into the execution chamber for 

any future executions of Muslim prisoners, and damages for his 

exclusion from the executions of Ray and Woods.

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22-10023 Opinion of the Court 3

The district court determined that Maisonet’s claims could 

not go forward. We agree. We thus affirm the district court’s 

judgment of dismissal, albeit on partially different grounds.

I.

Maisonet is an imam and volunteer chaplain at William C. 

Holman Correctional Facility in Alabama. In this role, he provided 

spiritual support to Ray and Woods as they prepared for their 

executions. Maisonet considers ministering to death row inmates

to be an important part of his own Muslim faith. In February 2019, 

Alabama executed Ray. Maisonet sought to accompany Ray into 

the execution chamber to be physically present for his passing and 

to assist Ray in reciting the shahada immediately before his death. 

But Alabama had a policy only allowing the official prison chaplain, 

Chris Summers, to provide religious counsel in the execution 

chamber. Under this policy, Maisonet was denied the ability to be 

present in the execution chamber during Ray’s execution. 

Shortly after Ray’s execution, Alabama changed its 

execution protocol to exclude any chaplain from the execution 

chamber. Alabama then executed Woods under its new policy. 

Maisonet had also been ministering to Woods, and he sought to 

accompany Woods in the execution chamber. But Alabama’s new 

policy still prevented Maisonet from being present during the 

execution. Maisonet alleges that Alabama will likely continue to 

exclude religious advisors from execution chambers. 

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4 Opinion of the Court 22-10023

Maisonet sued a variety of Alabama state officials, whom he 

alleges are collectively responsible for designing and implementing 

the policies that excluded him from the execution chamber. He 

argued that the officials’ actions in excluding him from Ray and 

Woods’s executions violated the Establishment Clause and the 

Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution, and the 

Alabama Religious Freedom Amendment to the Alabama State 

Constitution. He further argued that the existence of the policy of 

excluding religious advisors from the execution chamber continues 

to violate Maisonet’s rights under these provisions. He sought a 

declaration that the officials’ conduct had been unlawful, an 

injunction ensuring that he and other volunteer religious advisors 

are able to be present in the execution chamber in the future, and 

damages. 

The state officials moved to dismiss for lack of subject 

matter jurisdiction and for failure to state a claim on which relief 

can be granted, arguing among other things that Maisonet lacked 

standing and that his claims were barred by qualified immunity. 

The magistrate judge recommended that the case be dismissed in 

its entirety for lack of standing. The district court adopted the 

magistrate judge’s recommendation in full as its own opinion. 

Maisonet appealed. 

II. 

We review de novo “the district court’s grant of a motion to 

dismiss under Rule 12(b)(1) for lack of subject matter jurisdiction.” 

Georgia Ass’n of Latino Elected Offs., Inc. v. Gwinnett Cnty. Bd. 

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22-10023 Opinion of the Court 5

of Registration and Elections, 36 F.4th 1100, 1112 (11th Cir. 2022). 

We accept all allegations in the complaint as true and construe the 

facts in the light most favorable to the plaintiff. Id. at 1112–13. We 

apply the same standard of review to a 12(b)(6) motion to dismiss 

for failure to state a claim. Id.

III. 

The district court determined that Maisonet lacked standing 

for both his equitable and his legal claims. We agree that Maisonet

lacked standing to seek declaratory and injunctive relief against the 

state officials. We disagree that Maisonet lacked standing to bring 

his two Free Exercise damages claims.1 But with respect to those 

claims, we conclude that Maisonet failed to state a claim on which 

relief could be granted.2 We therefore affirm the court’s judgment 

of dismissal.

1 Maisonet’s appellate briefing only presents arguments about his Free Exercise Clause claims. He has therefore abandoned any challenges to the district 

court’s resolution of his Establishment Clause and his Alabama Religious Freedom Amendment claims. See Sapuppo v. Allstate Floridian Ins. Co., 739 F.3d 

678, 680 (11th Cir. 2014).

2 “While the district court did not reach the Defendants’ 12(b)(6) motion for 

failure to state a claim, we may affirm the district court’s dismissal on any 

ground found in the record.” Lord Abbett Mun. Income Fund., Inc. v. Tyson, 

671 F.3d 1203, 1207 (11th Cir. 2012) (disagreeing with the district court’s subject matter jurisdiction analysis but affirming the dismissal on 12(b)(6) 

grounds); see also, e.g., Green v. Jefferson Cnty. Com’n, 563 F.3d 1243, 1245 

(11th Cir. 2009) (same). 

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“To establish Article III standing, an injury must be 

concrete, particularized, and actual or imminent; fairly traceable to 

the challenged action; and redressable by a favorable ruling.” 

Clapper v. Amnesty Int’l, USA, 568 U.S. 398, 409 (2013) (quotation 

omitted). Because declaratory and injunctive relief necessarily do

not redress past harm, standing for such claims requires a showing 

of an ongoing or future injury. See, e.g., City of Los Angeles v. 

Lyons, 461 U.S. 95, 105 (1983); O’Shea v. Littleton, 414 U.S. 488, 

495–96 (1974). That means that Maisonet cannot base his standing 

for his declaratory and injunctive relief on the officials’ past 

conduct. Instead, Maisonet must allege either a current, ongoing 

injury or that a future injury is “certainly impending.” Clapper, 568

U.S. at 401. “[A]llegations of possible future injury are not 

sufficient.” Id. at 409 (quotation omitted). 

Maisonet cannot meet these requirements. He does not 

allege any ongoing injury, as he is not currently being prevented 

from entering an execution chamber. Nor has he alleged facts that

establish a certainly impending future injury. He states that he is 

“committed to providing religious support and guidance to the 

Muslims on Alabama’s death row” going forward, and that this

guidance will be interfered with by Alabama’s continued policy of 

excluding religious advisors from the execution chamber. But he 

fails to identify a single death row inmate whom he will be unable 

to aid during their execution, much less a scheduled execution date 

or other fact to establish that his exclusion from an execution really 

is “certainly impending.” 

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His appellate briefing fares no better. Maisonet now asserts

(without support) that many of Alabama’s 175 death row inmates 

are Muslims, and he guesses that (1) Alabama will eventually 

execute those inmates; (2) Maisonet will have a sufficient 

relationship with those inmates to feel a religious obligation to be 

present in the execution chamber for their executions; and (3) 

Alabama will exclude him from the executions. The final point in 

this chain seems particularly doubtful, as Alabama represents in its 

appellate briefing that it now allows spiritual advisors in the 

execution chamber after the Supreme Court’s decision in Dunn v. 

Smith, 141 S. Ct. 725 (2021). And even if the old policy still existed, 

Maisonet’s alleged future harm would rest on a “speculative chain 

of possibilities” that requires “guesswork as to how independent 

decisionmakers will exercise their judgment” and would not 

establish standing. Clapper, 586 U.S. at 413–414.

Maisonet’s two damages claims pose an entirely different 

question. No one can dispute that Maisonet suffered some sort of 

past injury; he wanted to access the execution chamber during Ray 

and Woods’s executions as part of his religious practice, and he was 

unable to do so. The only question is whether this is a “cognizable 

interest for purpose of standing.” Lujan v. Defs. of Wildlife, 504 

U.S. 555, 562–63 (1992).

We think that it is. The basic kind of injury that Maisonet 

experienced—namely, a burden on his religious exercise—is the 

kind of injury that gives rise to a Free Exercise claim. Maisonet 

alleges that he “seeks to engage in a sincerely motivated religious 

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8 Opinion of the Court 22-10023

exercise.” Kennedy v. Bremerton Sch. Dist., 142 S. Ct. 2407, 2422

(2022). Because Maisonet was unable to conduct his religious 

exercise due to the government’s conduct, he has suffered an injury 

in fact.3

In finding to the contrary, the district court made two errors: 

First, it confused the merits of Maisonet’s claim with the standing 

inquiry, incorrectly relying on fifty-year-old, out-of-circuit dicta for 

the proposition that an injury in fact cannot exist if no underlying 

legal right exists. See O’Malley v. Brierley, 477 F.2d 785, 793 (3d 

Cir. 1973). But standing “in no way depends on the merits of the 

plaintiff’s contention that particular conduct is illegal.” Moody v. 

Holman, 887 F.3d 1281, 1285 (11th Cir. 2018) (quoting Warth v. 

Seldin, 422 U.S. 490, 500 (1975)). For example, a “taxpayer has 

standing to challenge the collection of a specific tax assessment as 

unconstitutional,” United States v. Windsor, 570 U.S. 744, 755 

(2013) (quotation omitted), even if the tax is clearly lawful. An 

individual who is unable to use her property has standing to argue 

that she has been subject to a taking, see Lucas v. South Carolina 

3 It is also worth noting that Maisonet is not some far-off, abstractly concerned 

conscientious objector to Alabama’s prison procedures. Cf. Lujan, 504 U.S. at 

565–66 (contrasting the injury felt by environmental plaintiffs who actually use 

an impacted area with the injury felt by far-off plaintiffs only indirectly impacted); Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 734–35 (1972) (same). Rather, 

Maisonet had a five-year relationship with Ray prior to his execution and 

spoke with him on the day of his death, and he had at least some pre-existing 

relationship with Woods. And he alleges that he made a genuine effort to 

attend their executions. 

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22-10023 Opinion of the Court 9

Coastal Council, 505 U.S. 1003, 1012 & n.3 (1992), even if the 

criteria for regulatory takings have not been met. And here too, at 

least at the pleading stage, a burden on religious exercise creates an 

injury in fact, even if the burden was lawfully imposed. Cf. Fulton 

v. City of Philadelphia, 141 S. Ct. 1868, 1876 (2021) (“[T]he City’s 

actions have burdened CSS’s religious exercise . . . Our task is to 

decide whether the burden the City has placed on the religious 

exercise of CSS is constitutionally permissible.”).

Second, the district court conflated the injuries suffered by 

Maisonet with the injuries suffered by Ray and Woods. 

Throughout this litigation, Maisonet has made explicit that he is 

only litigating the State’s alleged violation of his own, personal 

right to minister, not the rights of Ray or Woods or any future 

prisoner. As will soon become apparent, this framing weakens 

Maisonet’s argument on the merits. But as a matter of standing 

law, Maisonet’s sole focus on his own rights obviates the need for 

third-party standing analysis. 

But the fact that Maisonet has alleged sufficient facts to 

establish standing to pursue his two damages claims at this stage of 

the litigation does not end our analysis. The court’s dismissal of 

Maisonet’s damages claims was proper for another reason: 

Maisonet cannot overcome qualified immunity.

Qualified immunity shields government officials “from liability for civil damages insofar as their conduct does not violate 

clearly established statutory or constitutional rights of which a reasonable person would have known.” Harlow v. Fitzgerald, 457 

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10 Opinion of the Court 22-10023

U.S. 800, 818 (1982). To receive qualified immunity, a defendant 

must first prove that he was acting within the scope of his discretionary authority when the relevant conduct took place. Lee v. 

Ferraro, 284 F.3d 1188, 1194 (11th Cir. 2002). Maisonet has not 

contested the state officials’ claim that they were acting in the scope 

of their discretionary authority.

“Once the defendant establishes that he was acting within 

his discretionary authority, the burden shifts to the plaintiff to 

demonstrate that qualified immunity is not appropriate.” Id. In 

evaluating whether a plaintiff has met this burden, we examine: 

(1) whether the facts, taken in the light most favorable to the party 

asserting the injury, show that the defendant’s conduct violated a 

constitutional right, and (2) whether the right in question was 

clearly established. Id. The law “does not require a case directly 

on point for a right to be clearly established,” but “existing precedent must have placed the statutory or constitutional question beyond debate.” Rivas-Villegas v. Cortesluna, 142 S. Ct. 4, 7–8 (2021).

A plaintiff’s failure to establish either prong leads to a finding of 

qualified immunity. Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 242 (2009). 

Because the parties focus on the second prong of this analysis, we 

do so too. 

Maisonet has not come close to demonstrating that his 

exclusion from Ray and Woods’s executions violated his rights 

under clearly established law. He has not offered a single case in 

any jurisdiction showing that a minister has a freestanding Free 

Exercise right, independent of the prisoners, to enter a prison to

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conduct a religious exercise. Much less has he offered any cases 

demonstrating that a non-prison employee might have a 

freestanding right to be in an execution chamber, perhaps the most 

sensitive of prison contexts. 

Nor is there a “broader, clearly established principle” that 

demonstrates that Maisonet’s rights were violated. Morton v. 

Kirkwood, 707 F.3d 1276, 1282 (11th Cir. 2013) (quotation 

omitted). Maisonet has not alleged facts that show that “a 

government entity has burdened his sincere religious practice 

pursuant to a policy that is not neutral or generally applicable.” 

Kennedy, 142 S. Ct. at 2422 (quotation omitted). And this is where 

Maisonet’s reliance on his own rights, independent of the inmates, 

proves fatal. Ray could clearly argue that he had less access to a 

minister at his execution as a Muslim inmate than a Christian 

inmate would have had. But Maisonet does not allege that he had 

less ability to minister to others as a Muslim volunteer chaplain

than a Christian volunteer chaplain would have had. Instead, he 

alleges that all religious advisors except the official prison chaplain 

were excluded under the first policy, and that all religious advisors, 

period, were excluded under the second policy. But under both 

policies, any volunteer chaplain—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, 

Atheist, or otherwise—would have been excluded from the 

execution chamber. And Maisonet does not allege that the state 

officials treated some “comparable secular activity” more favorably 

by allowing other non-state officials in the execution chamber for 

secular purposes. Tandom v. Newsom, 141 S. Ct. 1294, 1296 

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12 Opinion of the Court 22-10023

(2021). Maisonet’s allegations suggest that both policies excluded

all non-prison staff members from the execution chamber.4

Maisonet attempts to circumnavigate this by relying on 

legally and factually inapposite cases. He claims that cases such as 

Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 

520 (1993) and Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia, Inc. v. 

Comer, 137 S. Ct. 2012 (2017) clearly establish that Alabama’s 

facially neutral policy violated the law because it subjectively

sought to punish particular religious practices through facially 

neutral means. These arguments are dubious given the lack of 

evidence in the record that Alabama designed its policies to place a 

greater burden on Maisonet’s religious practices than on the 

practices of any other non-state employees, all of whom would 

have been excluded from the execution chamber regardless of 

religion. And even if these arguments had merit, the wildly 

different factual contexts of these cases would place them at far 

“too high a level of generality” for a qualified immunity analysis. 

City of Tahlequah v. Bond, 142 S. Ct. 9, 11 (2021).

As a final effort to overcome qualified immunity, Maisonet 

argues that—at least for Ray’s execution—the law was clearly 

established by this Court’s initial stay of Ray’s execution on the 

4 This is without even accounting for states’ “well established . . . compelling 

interest in security and order within their prisons,” Lawson v. Singletary, 85 

F.3d 502, 512 (11th Cir. 1996), which would be relevant to a full merits analysis 

of a claim like Maisonet’s.

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grounds that the policy likely violated Ray’s rights under the 

Establishment Clause. Ray v. Comm’r, Alabama Dep’t of Corr., 

915 F.3d 689 (11th Cir. 2019), vacated sub nom Dunn v. Ray, 139 S. 

Ct. 661 (2019). It should go without saying that a single 

subsequently vacated stay holding that a policy likely violated one 

person’s rights under the Establishment Clause does not clearly 

establish that the same policy violated another, differently situated 

person’s rights under the Free Exercise Clause.

Maisonet has not alleged any ongoing or certainly 

impending future injury. And he cannot demonstrate that his past 

injuries violated clearly established law. The district court thus 

correctly determined that this lawsuit cannot move forward.

* * *

We modify the judgment of the district court to declare that 

Maisonet’s Free Exercise Clause damages claims are dismissed with 

prejudice under Rule 12(b)(6) and AFFIRM the judgment as 

modified. 

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