Opinion ID: 76812
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: RLUIPA is Rationally Related to a Federal Interest.

Text: 32 Georgia erroneously argues that the federal grants for its prisons are unrelated to the objectives of RLUIPA. Georgia relies on the statement in Dole that the Court has suggested (without significant elaboration) that conditions on federal grants might be illegitimate if they are unrelated to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs. 483 U.S. at 207, 107 S.Ct. at 2796 (internal citations omitted). The problem with this argument is that the United States has a substantial interest in ensuring that state prisons that receive federal funds protect the federal civil rights of prisoners. 33 Congress has every right to ensure that the state prisons that accept federal funds respect the religious freedom of prisoners and promote their rehabilitation: 34 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. 35 Mayweathers, 314 F.3d at 1067; see also Charles, 348 F.3d at 608-09. 36 The warning in Dole that Spending Clause legislation might be illegitimate if it is unrelated to the purpose of the federal spending program, 483 U.S. at 207, 107 S.Ct. at 2796, and the guidance in New York v. United States, 505 U.S. 144, 167, 112 S.Ct. 2408, 2423, 120 L.Ed.2d 120 (1992), that Spending Clause legislation should bear some relationship to the purpose of the federal spending, establish a minimal standard of rationality. RLUIPA easily satisfies this standard. Both the protection of the religious exercise of prisoners and their rehabilitation are rational goals of Congress, and those goals are related to the use of federal funds for state prisons. 37 Georgia fails in its argument that highway safety, the federal interest in Dole, was tied more closely to the funding condition that states raise their legal drinking age to 21 than the funding of prisons is tied to the objectives of RLUIPA. The connection between raising the drinking age and highway funds is no more related than the connection between accommodating the religious exercise of prisoners and correctional funds. Mayweathers, 314 F.3d at 1067; Charles, 348 F.3d at 608-09. If anything, the protection of the free exercise of religion, a civil right guaranteed by the First Amendment, is a more substantial federal interest than highway safety. 38 Georgia also wrongly argues that the extensive conditions imposed by RLUIPA are not in proportion to the small amount of federal funds dedicated to state correctional systems. Georgia relies on Rust v. Sullivan, 500 U.S. 173, 111 S.Ct. 1759, 114 L.Ed.2d 233 (1990), and FCC v. League of Women Voters, 468 U.S. 364, 104 S.Ct. 3106, 82 L.Ed.2d 278 (1984), in support of this argument. Although both of those decisions briefly discussed the Spending Clause, the holdings of the Court turned on statutory conditions that violated the free speech rights of individual citizens. Neither decision involved conditions imposed on the receipt of federal funds by states. As the Seventh Circuit stated in Charles, both Rust and League of Women Voters are inapposite; they do not even concern the Spending Clause. Charles, 348 F.3d at 601. 39 The Seventh Circuit also correctly explained in Charles that there is no standard of proportionality for spending legislation: 40 Nothing within Spending Clause jurisprudence, or RLUIPA for that matter, suggests that States are bound by the conditional grant of federal money only if the State receives or derives a certain percentage ... of its budget from federal funds. If a State wishes to receive any federal funding, it must accept the related, unambiguous conditions in their entirety. 41 Id. Likewise, Georgia cannot accept federal funds and then attempt to avoid their accompanying conditions by arguing that the conditions are disproportionate in scope.