Opinion ID: 780325
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Relatedness to the Federal Interest in National Projects or Programs

Text: 12 The Supreme Court has suggested that federal grants conditioned on compliance with federal directives might be illegitimate if the conditions share no relationship to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs. Dole, 483 U.S. at 207, 107 S.Ct. 2793. This possible ground for invalidating a Spending Clause statute, which only suggests that the legislation might be illegitimate without demonstrating a nexus between the conditions and a specified national interest, is a far cry from imposing an exacting standard for relatedness. The nonconclusive language leaves open the possibility for attacking a spending power statute on this basis, but it does not mean that a statute is automatically illegitimate. 13 The Court has stated more recently that [s]uch conditions must ... bear some relationship to the purpose of the federal spending. New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 167, 112 S.Ct. 2408, 120 L.Ed.2d 120 (1992) (citation omitted). The conditions in RLUIPA do share such a relationship. Congress has a strong interest in making certain that federal funds do not subsidize conduct that infringes individual liberties, such as the free practice of one's religion. The federal government also has a strong interest in monitoring the treatment of federal inmates housed in state prisons and in contributing to their rehabilitation. Congress may allocate federal funds freely, then, to protect the free exercise of religion and to promote rehabilitation. If the Supreme Court has in fact imposed a low-threshold relatedness test, RLUIPA satisfies it.