It’s not often that we report on an RLUIPA prisoner case, but the case Thomas v. Corbett, No. 458 M.D. 2013 (Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court April 29, 2014), is remarkable enough in its claims to warrant review.  Thomas Corbett, a 55year-old polygamist Muslim convicted of murder, is suing certain Pennsylvania officials under RLUIPA and the U.S. Constitution over the Department of Corrections’ (DOC) policy prohibiting conjugal visits.  Thomas claims that his religion requires him to marry, to have multiple wives, and that the denial of conjugal visits “has a detrimental effect on the status of his marriages, because his wives are threatening to divorce him under Islamic religious rules if they are unable to have intercourse with him.”

While this may seem like your run-of-the mill RLUIPA prisoner claim, some of Thomas’ other claims stand out.  Thomas asserts that the DOC’s prohibition of conjugal visits is discriminatory and violates equal protection because while “the general homosexual prison population is able to engage in sexual conduct with one another . . . heterosexual males may not have sex.”  Thomas also claims that the no-conjugal visit policy violates the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment because “the presence of female correctional officers causes him emotional distress.”

The court denied the DOC’s motion to dismiss Thomas’ RLUIPA claim at this stage of the proceedings because in considering dismissal, the court can only look to the pleadings as set forth in the complaint, and dismissing the RLUIPA claim would deny Thomas an opportunity to carry his burden of persuasion on the issue.  Even though the DOC claimed that the conjugal visit prohibition serves a compelling governmental interest, it failed to argue that its policy was the “least restrictive means” possible of furthering that alleged interest, as required by RLUIPA.  The court’s analysis of the burden of persuasion and sincerity of religious beliefs under RLUIPA may be useful to municipalities in the land use context when considering the threat of RLUIPA litigation.

The court dismissed Thomas’ equal protection and cruel and unusual punishment claims because they were insufficiently pled.  To learn more about RLUIPA/conjugal visit cases, read our post about the Ninth Circuit’s 2013 decision in Pouncil v. Tilton, No. 10-16881(9th Cir. 2012).

The court’s decision in Thomas v. Corbett, No. 458 M.D. 2013 (Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court April 29, 2014) can be accessed here.

Print:
Email this postTweet this postLike this postShare this post on LinkedIn
Photo of Evan Seeman Evan Seeman

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of…

Evan J. Seeman is a lawyer in Robinson+Cole’s Hartford office and focuses his practice on land use, real estate, environmental, and regulatory matters, representing local governments, developers and advocacy groups. He has spoken and written about RLUIPA, and was a lead author of an amicus curiae brief at the petition stage before the United States Supreme Court in a RLUIPA case entitled City of San Leandro v. International Church of the Foursquare Gospel.

Evan serves as the Secretary/Treasurer of the APA’s Planning & Law Division. He also serves as the Chair of the Planning & Zoning Section of the Connecticut Bar Association’s Young Lawyers Section, and is the former Co-Chair of its Municipal Law Section. He has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list as a Rising Star in the area of Land Use Law for 2013 and 2014. He received his B.A. in political science and Russian studies (with honors) from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he was selected as the President’s Fellow in the Department of Modern Languages and Literature. Evan received his Juris Doctor at the University of Connecticut School of Law, where he served on the Connecticut Law Review. While in law school, he interned with the Connecticut Office of the Attorney General in the environmental department, and served as a judicial intern for the judges of the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Court. Following law school, Evan clerked for the Honorable F. Herbert Gruendel of the Connecticut Appellate Court.

Read more about Evan Seeman
Show more Show less
Photo of Dwight Merriam Dwight Merriam

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of…

Dwight H. Merriam founded Robinson+Cole’s Land Use Group in 1978. He represents land owners, developers, governments and individuals in land use matters, with a focus on defending governments in RLUIPA cases. Dwight is a Fellow and Past President of the American Institute of Certified Planners, a former Director of the American Planning Association (APA), a former chair of APA’s Planning and Law Division, Immediate Past Chair of the American Bar Association’s Section of State and Local Government Law, Chair of the Institute of Local Government Studies at the Center for American and International Law, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation, a member of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute National Advisory Board, a Fellow of the Connecticut Bar Foundation, a Counselor of Real Estate, a member of the Anglo-American Real Property Institute, and a Fellow of the American College of Real Estate Lawyers.

He teaches land use law at the University of Connecticut School of Law and at Vermont Law School and has published over 200 articles and eight books, including Inclusionary Zoning Moves Downtown, The Takings Issue, The Complete Guide to Zoning, and Eminent Domain Use and Abuse: Kelo in Context. He is the senior co-author of the leading casebook on land use law, Planning and Control of Land Development (Eighth Edition). Dwight has written and spoken widely on how to avoid RLUIPA claims and how to successfully defend against them in court. He is currently writing a book on the subject, RLUIPA DEFENSE, for the American Bar Association.

Dwight has been named to the Connecticut Super Lawyers® list in the area of Land Use Law since 2006, is one of the Top 50 Connecticut Super Lawyers in Connecticut, and is one of the Top 100 New England Super Lawyers (Super Lawyers is a registered trademark of Key Professional Media, Inc.). He received his B.A. (cum laude) from the University of Massachusetts, his Masters of Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina, where he was the graduation speaker in 2011, and his J.D. from Yale. He is a featured speaker at many land use seminars, and presents monthly audio land use seminars for the International Municipal Lawyers Association. Dwight has been cited in the national press from The New York Times to People magazine and has appeared on NBC’s The Today Show, MSNBC and public television.

Dwight also had a career in the Navy, serving for three tours in Vietnam aboard ship, then returning to be the Senior Advisor of the Naval ROTC Unit at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he taught Defense Administration and Military Management as an Assistant Professor in the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in Defense Administration and Military Management. He left active duty after seven years to attend law school, but continued on for 24 more years as a reserve Surface Warfare Officer with two major commands, including that of the reserve commanding officer of the Naval Undersea Warfare Center. He retired as a Captain in 2009 after 31 years of service.

Show more Show less