Document Type

Brief

Publication Date

4-27-2023

Abstract

No. 23-131
Franklin Loving v. Robert Morton

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 3:20-cv-11135

From the Summary of Argument

The Second Circuit should re-examine its precedent to allow for monetary damages for individual-capacity suits under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) for three reasons. First, RLUIPA’s text follows the same approach as 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and should be interpreted to afford the same types of broad remedies. Before Employment Division of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), reduced the availability of free exercise claims, free exercise claims for monetary damages were frequently brought under § 1983. RLUIPA simply restored this way of vindicating rights violations to incarcerated religious claimants.

Comments

Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR) is a project at City University of New York School of Law. CLEAR’s mandate is to support Muslim and all other communities and movements in the New York City area and beyond that are targeted by local, state, or federal government agencies under the guise of national security and counterterrorism. CLEAR was founded in 2009 and is housed at the City University of New York School of Law, within Main Street Legal Services, Inc., the clinical arm of the law school. CLEAR represented the plaintiffs in Tanzin v. Tanvir, 141 S. Ct. 486 (2020), at the heart of this litigation.

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