Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act
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The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, Pub.L. 106-274, 42 U.S.C. ยง 2000cc-1 et seq. (RLUIPA) is a statute that prohibits the imposition of burdens on the ability of prisoners to worship as they please, as well as making it easier for Churches and other religious institutions to avoid state interference in their property through zoning laws.. It was enacted by the U.S. Congress in 2000, in an effort to correct the constitutionally objectionable problems of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) of 1993. The act was passed in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate by unanimous consent, meaning that no objection was raised to its passage, so no vote was taken. In the hearings that preceded the passage of the bill, there had only been minor opposition, which came from prison officials who feared that the act would spur frivolous lawsuits.
In the 1990s, the United States Supreme Court had held the RFRA to be unconstitutional, as applied to state and local governments, in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). Unlike the RFRA, which required religious accommodation in virtually all spheres of life, the RLUIPA only applies to prisoners, and Land Use (Zoning) of properties.
In the 2005 case of Cutter v. Wilkinson, five prisoners in Ohio - including a Wiccan, a Satanist, and a member of a racist Christian sect - successfully sought to apply the protections of the act to their religious practices. The Sixth Circuit had held that RLUIPA violated the Establishment Clause by impermissibly advancing religion by bestowing benefits to religious prisoners that were unavailable to non-religious prisoners.
The Supreme Court disagreed, unanimously holding that RLUIPA was a permissible accommodation of religion justified by the fact that the government itself had severely burdened the prisoners' religious rights through the act of incarceration. A concurring opinion by Justice Thomas noted that the states could escape the restrictions of RLUIPA simply by refusing federal funds for state prisons.
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