Court Opinion

ID: 9477105
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:14:06.403757+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:45:41.818220
License: Public Domain

ALVIN B. RUBIN, Circuit Judge,
specially concurring:
Ms. Kahey’s convictions appear to me to be sincere and her requests might readily be accommodated. The steps taken by prison authorities — identifying dishes that contain pork on posted menus and offering sliced cheese at meals when the main dish contains pork — may have been intended as accommodations, but they are apparently all but irrelevant to the tenets of Ms. Ka-hey’s religion, which prohibits not merely the consumption of pork, but the consumption of any foods prepared with or served in dishes used in cooking or serving pork. Given the modest dimensions of Ms. Ka-hey’s proposed meal plan, I see no real danger that the administration of the St. Gabriel Prison would be seriously embarrassed if the cooks boiled or baked her potatoes in the skin and served her two eggs and a half pint of milk daily. She has suggested a practicable alternative that would not require prison officials to set up a separate kitchen system. Nonetheless she is in prison and we defer to the decisions of the prison authorities in such administrative matters. The free exercise clause does not entitle this court to substitute its judgment for theirs. Therefore, I concur.