Court Opinion

ID: 9482156
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 08:42:14.581829+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:48:48.454870
License: Public Domain

HEANEY, Senior Circuit Judge,
concurring.
I concur only because our opinion in Iron Eyes v. Dowd, 907 F.2d 810 (8th Cir.1990), *589leaves me no other alternative. I continue to believe that our opinion in Iron Eyes was not required by Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 107 S.Ct. 2254, 96 L.Ed.2d 64 (1987).
This case is even stronger than Iron Eyes. Here, Stephen Kemp, a member of the Chickasaw Indian Nation, was permitted to wear his hair long at the Missouri State Penitentiary. It was only after he was transferred to the Farmington Correctional Center that the director of that facility told Kemp that he had to have his hair cut. No rational reason has been advanced as to why it was permissible to wear long hair in the Missouri State Penitentiary but not at the Farmington Correctional Center, even though the former is a more secure prison than the latter.
This case smacks of harassment and religious persecution to me. See generally, John Rhodes, An American Tradition: The Religious Persecution of Native Americans, 52 Mont-L.Rev. 13 (1991). The sooner our court en banc considers this question and resolves to do away with the penological myth that the director of this institution perpetuates, the better.