David Thomas v. Isidro Baca ( 2020 )

NOT FOR PUBLICATION FILED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS OCT 28 2020
MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK
U.S. COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT
DAVID JONATHAN THOMAS, No. 19-16283
Plaintiff-Appellee, D.C. No.
3:13-cv-00508-RCJ-CBC
v.
ISIDRO BACA, Warden; et. al., MEMORANDUM*
Defendants-Appellants.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the District of Nevada
Robert C. Jones, District Judge, Presiding
Argued and Submitted October 8, 2020
Seattle, Washington
Before: GILMAN,** CALLAHAN, and CHRISTEN, Circuit Judges.
Officials associated with the Nevada Department of Corrections (NDOC)
and the Northern Nevada Correctional Center (NNCC) appeal the district court’s
denial of their motion for summary judgment based on qualified immunity. David
Jonathan Thomas, an inmate at NNCC, filed suit under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging
*
This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent
except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3.
**
The Honorable Ronald Lee Gilman, United States Circuit Judge for
the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit, sitting by designation.
that the officials violated his rights under the First Amendment and the Religious
Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) by denying him a
vegetarian-kosher diet. The district court held that genuine disputes of material
fact precluded the grant of summary judgment in favor of the officials. We affirm.
The district court’s denial of summary judgment on qualified-immunity
grounds is reviewed de novo. S.B. v. County of San Diego, 864 F.3d 1010, 1013
(9th Cir. 2017). In resolving questions of law, we ignore the officials’ attempts to
dispute the facts, accept Thomas’s version of the facts as true, and draw all
reasonable inferences in Thomas’s favor. See Plumhoff v. Rickard, 572 U.S. 765,
768 (2014); see also Scott v. Harris, 550 U.S. 372, 377–78 (2007).
An analysis regarding qualified immunity involves two elements:
(1) whether the officials’ conduct violated a statutory or constitutional right, and
(2) whether that right was clearly established at the time of the alleged violation.
See Pearson v. Callahan, 555 U.S. 223, 232 (2009). The officials concede for the
purpose of this interlocutory appeal that a genuine dispute of material fact exists
regarding the first element. They therefore limit their argument on appeal to the
contention that Thomas’s First Amendment right to a vegetarian-kosher diet was
not clearly established at the time of the officials’ actions. Their argument is
unavailing.
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This court established long ago that inmates “have the right to be provided
with food sufficient to sustain them in good health that satisfies the dietary laws of
their religion.” McElyea v. Babbitt, 833 F.2d 196, 198 (9th Cir. 1988). More
recently, we held that a Muslim inmate had a right under the First Amendment’s
Free Exercise Clause to a diet in line with his sincere religious beliefs even though
the diet was uncommon to the mainstream mandates of his religion. Shakur v.
Schriro, 514 F.3d 878, 882, 893 (9th Cir. 2008) (upholding a Muslim inmate’s
request to substitute a vegetarian halal diet with a meat-based kosher diet in order
to prevent stomach upsets that interfered with the state of “purity and cleanliness”
needed for Muslim prayer). These precedents are sufficiently similar to the case
before us to put prison officials on notice that, when an inmate holds sincere
religious beliefs and requests a diet rooted in those beliefs, refusing to
accommodate that request violates the inmate’s First Amendment rights unless the
refusal is reasonably related to a legitimate penological interest. Turner v. Safley,
482 U.S. 78, 89–91 (1987) (establishing a four-factor balancing test to determine
whether officials’ actions that adversely impact the Free Exercise Clause are
justified by legitimate penological interests and are, therefore, valid).
The facts as viewed most favorably to Thomas show that his requests for a
vegetarian-kosher diet were rooted in sincerely held religious beliefs. Each of
Thomas’s requests was accompanied both by an assertion that his religious beliefs
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commanded such a diet and by numerous citations to relevant scripture. The
officials, moreover, have not asserted a legitimate penological interest that would
justify the denial of Thomas’s requests. Indeed, the officials have failed to put
forth any argument related to the Turner factors. The present state of the record
therefore supports the decision of the district court to deny summary judgment in
favor of the officials.
Judgement AFFIRMED and case REMANDED.
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