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Page Number: 9

6 

HOLT v. HOBBS 

Opinion of the Court 

on  which  relief  can  be  granted.    The  Magistrate  Judge
emphasized that “the prison officials are entitled to defer-
ence,”  id.,  at  168,  and  that  the  grooming  policy  allowed 
petitioner to exercise his religion in other ways, such as by
praying on a prayer rug, maintaining the diet required by 
his faith, and observing religious holidays. 

The  District  Court  adopted  the  Magistrate  Judge’s
recommendation  in  full,  and  the  Court  of  Appeals  for  the 
Eighth  Circuit  affirmed  in  a  brief  per  curiam  opinion,
holding  that  the  Department  had  satisfied  its  burden  of 
showing that the grooming policy was the least restrictive 
means of furthering its compelling security interests.  509 
Fed.  Appx.  561  (2013).    The  Court  of  Appeals  stated  that 
“courts  should  ordinarily  defer  to  [prison  officials’]  expert 
judgment”  in  security  matters  unless  there  is  substantial 
evidence  that  a  prison’s  response  is  exaggerated.    Id.,  at 
562.  And  while  acknowledging  that  other  prisons  allow 
inmates  to  maintain  facial  hair,  the  Eighth  Circuit  held
that  this  evidence  “does  not  outweigh  deference  owed  to
[the]  expert  judgment  of  prison  officials  who  are  more
familiar with their own institutions.”  Ibid. 

We entered an injunction pending resolution of petition-
er’s petition for writ of certiorari, 571 U. S. ___ (2013), and 
we then granted certiorari, 571 U. S. ___ (2014). 

II 
Under  RLUIPA,  petitioner  bore  the  initial  burden  of
proving that the Department’s grooming policy implicates
his  religious  exercise.    RLUIPA  protects  “any  exercise  of 
religion,  whether  or  not  compelled  by,  or  central  to,  a
system of religious belief,” §2000cc–5(7)(A), but, of course, 
a  prisoner’s  request  for  an  accommodation  must  be  sin-
cerely based on a religious belief and not some other moti-
vation, see Hobby Lobby, 573 U. S., at ___, n. 28 (slip op., 
at  29,  n. 28).    Here,  the  religious  exercise  at  issue  is  the 
growing of a beard, which petitioner believes is a dictate of