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Page Number: 17

14 

HOLT v. HOBBS 

Opinion of the Court 

neck.”  App. to Brief for Petitioner 11a.  Hair on the head 
is a more plausible place to hide contraband than a 1⁄2-inch 
beard—and  the  same  is  true  of  an  inmate’s  clothing  and
shoes.  Nevertheless,  the  Department  does  not  require
inmates to go about bald, barefoot, or naked.  Although the
Department’s proclaimed objectives are to stop the flow of 
contraband  and  to  facilitate  prisoner  identification,  “[t]he
proffered objectives are not pursued with respect to analo-
gous  nonreligious  conduct,”  which  suggests  that  “those 
interests  could  be  achieved  by  narrower  ordinances  that 
burdened  religion  to  a  far  lesser  degree.”  Church  of 
Lukumi  Babalu  Aye,  Inc.  v.  Hialeah,  508  U. S.  520,  546 
(1993).

In an attempt to demonstrate why its grooming policy is
underinclusive  in  these  respects,  the  Department  empha-
sizes  that  petitioner’s  1⁄2-inch  beard  is  longer  than  the  1⁄4-
inch  beard  allowed  for  medical  reasons.    But  the  Depart-
ment has failed to establish (and the District Court did not 
find)  that  a  1⁄4-inch  difference  in  beard  length  poses  a
meaningful  increase  in  security  risk.    The  Department 
also  asserts  that  few  inmates  require  beards  for  medical 
reasons  while  many  may  request  beards  for  religious 
reasons.  But the Department has not argued that denying
petitioner  an  exemption  is  necessary  to  further  a  compel-
ling interest in cost control or program administration.  At 
bottom,  this  argument  is  but  another  formulation  of  the
“classic  rejoinder  of  bureaucrats  throughout  history:  If  I 
make an exception for you, I’ll have to make one for every-
body, so no exceptions.”  O Centro, 546 U. S., at 436.  We 
have  rejected  a  similar  argument  in  analogous  contexts, 
see ibid.; Sherbert, 374 U. S., at 407, and we reject it again 
today.

Second,  the  Department  failed  to  show,  in  the  face  of 
petitioner’s evidence, why the vast majority of States and
the  Federal  Government  permit  inmates  to  grow  1⁄2-inch 
beards,  either  for  any  reason  or  for  religious  reasons,  but