WASHINGTON, Jan. 20 (UPI) -- Arkansas prison officials presented no compelling reason to bar a Muslim inmate from wearing a short beard, the U.S. Supreme Court said Tuesday.
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for a unanimous court, said a half-inch beard is no better hiding place for contraband than clothes, head hair or shoes.
"Nevertheless, the department does not require inmates to go about bald, barefoot or naked," he said.
Gregory Houston Holt, who also uses the name Abdul Maalik Muhammad, is serving a life sentence in Arkansas for the murder of a former girlfriend and was also convicted of threatening President George W. Bush's daughters. Holt in a brief said he would be willing to keep his beard trimmed short even though "Allah's Messenger said, 'Cut the moustaches short and leave the beard.'"
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Holt's lawyers argued the prison was violating the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. The prison allows inmates with skin problems to wear beards that can be no longer than one-quarter inch long but does not allow beards on religious grounds.
Alito acknowledged the prison does not have to grant all religious requests but said it must justify turning down inmates. Alito dealt with a similar case as an appellate judge on a court that ruled Muslim police officers must be allowed to wear beards.
Most other prison systems in the country, including the federal one, do allow inmates to wear beards for religious reasons, something Alito cited when he said Arkansas's arguments for its regulation are "hard to take seriously."
Alito's arguments echoed those in the Hobby Lobby case last year when a divided court found that the Affordable Care Act's requirement that employers must provide contraceptive coverage violates the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
Justices Ruth Ginsburg and Sonia Sotomayor, who were in the minority in that decision, issued a concurring opinion that tried to distinguish the Holt case from Hobby Lobby, where they argued with two other justices that allowing Hobby Lobby to withhold birth-control coverage would harm employees who do not agree with the company's owners. They said that allowing Muslim inmates to wear beards does not affect people who do not share their beliefs.
