West v. Radtke

Dist. Ct. erred in granting defendants-prison officials’ motion for summary judgment in plaintiff-prisoner’s action under Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), alleging that defendants’ strip search of plaintiff in presence of guard who is transgender male, violated moral tenets of his Muslim religion, where defendant-warden denied plaintiff’s request for exemption from future cross-sex strip searches and told him that he would be disciplined if he objected to said searches in future. Record showed that plaintiff’s objection to cross-sex strip searches was both religious and sincere in nature, and burden on plaintiff’s religion was unjustified under RLUIPA’s strict-scrutiny standard. Ct. further rejected defendants’ argument that exemption from cross-sex strip searches would violate anti-discrimination rights of transgender employees either under Title VII (since exemption of plaintiff from cross-sex strip searches would not inflict sufficient adverse act on transgender employees) or equal protection clause. Also, Dist. Ct. erred in granting defendants’ summary judgment motion with respect to plaintiff’s 4th Amendment claim to be free from unreasonable searches, where Dist. Ct. improperly found that prisoners have no 4th Amendment interest against visual inspections of their bodies.