Court Opinion

ID: 9482904
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 09:04:19.758445+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:49:16.610864
License: Public Domain

HANSEN, Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I wholeheartedly concur in the court’s opinion. The Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, does not require the penitentiary to hire a separate MST advisor as requested by the MST inmates. As discussed in the last paragraph of the court’s opinion, the MST inmates have the ability to freely exercise their religious beliefs. The Free Exercise Clause does not require the penitentiary to make further “special accommodations” for the MST inmates’ religious beliefs, nor does it require the prison authorities to provide for the proper education of the MST inmates in their religion as the district court seems to hold. I write separately, however, only to emphasize that at oral argument the MST inmates acknowledged that they do not raise a claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Some of the language from the magistrate judge’s report and recommendation quoted in the dissent suggests an equal protection analysis. Whether or not the MST inmates have an opportunity to “practice their religion with the same *165freedoms that other derivative sects of other major religious groups at ISP enjoy,” Blair-Bey v. Nix, No. 4-87-CV-70478, slip op. at 6 (S.D.Iowa July 9, 1991) (magistrate judge’s report and recommendation), is simply not before us.