Chicago, IL - A federal court of appeals has ruled in favor of an inmate who claimed that Wisconsin prison officials violated his rights under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because they refused to allow him to create a study group for atheists.
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that prison officials erred because they “did not treat atheism as a ‘religion.’” “Atheism,” said the court, “is [the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being.”
Brian Fahling, senior trial attorney for the American Family Association Center for Law & Policy, described the court’s ruling as “a sort of Alice in Wonderland jurisprudence.” “Up is down, and atheism, the antithesis of religion, is religion,” stated Fahling.
The Supreme Court has said that a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the Court described “secular humanism” as a religion.
Fahling pointed to today’s ruling as “further evidence of the incoherence Establishment Clause jurisprudence.” “It is difficult not to be somewhat jaundiced about our courts,” continued Fahling, “when they take clauses especially designed to protect religion from the state and turn them on their head by giving protective cover to a belief system, that, by every known definition other than the courts’ is not a religion, while simultaneously declaring public expressions of true religious faith to be prohibited.”
AFA.Net - Divisions - Center for Law and Policy - Press Release - 8/19/2005
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