UK Court Faces Prisoner Free Exercise Claim

A prisoner free exercise decision handed down last month by Britain's Administrative Court is interesting as a comparison to the approach under the 1st Amendment and RLUIPA routinely taken to such cases in the U.S. In Bashir, R (on the application of) v The Independent Adjudicator , (EWHC Admin., May 3, 2011), a devout Muslim prisoner on the advice of an imam was engaged in a 3-day personal fast in religious preparation for his Court of Appeal appearance when he was asked for a urine sample for a random drug test.  He was convicted of violating prison regulations when he refused to drink enough water to allow him to give a sufficient urine sample for the test.  The court reversed the conviction imposed by the independent adjudicator, holding that under Art. 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights it needed to be determined whether the interference with religion was proportionate to the end pursued. The court concluded:

There was no evidence before the Adjudicator which enabled him to conclude (as apparently he did) that it was proportionate to require all Muslim prisoners engaged in personal fasting to break that fast as and when required to do so for the purposes of providing a MDT sample regardless of the circumstances. In any event some care needs to be taken before a Court accepts at face value assertions of an un-particularised sort that making reasonable adjustments would be too administratively inconvenient or too expensive to be contemplated.

UK Human Rights Blog reported on the decision last week. [Thanks to Peter Griffith for the lead.]