Appeals Court Keeps Kosher Prison Meal Lawsuit Alive
MIAMI (CBSMiami/NSF) — A Jewish prisoner's lawsuit seeking a kosher meal plan in Florida prisons can go forward, a federal appeals court ruled Tuesday.
Bruce Rich, an orthodox Jew serving a life sentence at Union Correctional Institution for the murder of his parents, allegedly for insurance money, sued the Department of Corrections and other defendants in 2010. He argued that the meal choices offered by the prison system, which didn't include a kosher plan, violated the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
The federal trial court issued a summary judgment against Rich after state prison officials submitted affidavits arguing it was too costly to offer kosher meals, and that it was a security risk because it could lead to retaliation against inmates getting kosher meals if other inmates believed the kosher food was of higher quality.
Rich appealed that ruling to the U.S. 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, which on Tuesday overruled the summary judgment and sent the case back to the district court for further proceedings.
A three judge panel of the appeals court said that the state hadn't shown it had either a compelling interest in denying Rich and other prisoners the diet, or that denying the diet was the least restrictive means of serving whatever that compelling interest might be.
"While safety and cost can be compelling governmental interests, the defendants have not carried their burden to show that Florida's policy in fact furthered these two interests," U.S. Circuit Judge Beverly B. Martin wrote in the panel's opinion.
Meanwhile, the Department of Corrections last month began offering kosher meals at Union C.I., and said it would make them available at other prisons later this year.
But the timing of that decision, just as the court was considering the issue, seemed to be an effort to "manipulate" the case, the appeals court said, noting that Florida's prisons used to have such a plan, but discontinued it a few years before Rich filed suit.
"There is nothing to suggest that Florida will not simply end the new kosher meal program at some point in the future, just as it did in 2007," the court wrote.
The case overlaps another one on the same issue. In August, 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice also sued the Florida Department of Corrections for its failure to provide kosher meals to religiously observant Jewish inmates.
That lawsuit remains pending in the Southern District of Florida, with a hearing set on a motion for a preliminary injunction on June 4 in Miami.
The state estimated in its affidavit on the cost, that if it were to offer a kosher meal plan, it could have to provide the meals to more than 6,200 inmates - not just Jewish ones, but also Muslim inmates who may have similar dietary requirements.
The court noted, however, that Muslim inmates are already accommodated because Florida's prison system already has removed port products from prison meal plans.
Rich was sentenced in 1999 for the 1995 murders of his parents, Irving and Blanche Rich, of North Miami. They were the owners of a Hialeah garment business, Apple Hill, Inc.
"The News Service of Florida contributed to this report."
