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applying strict scrutiny to both First Amendment and KRFRA claim
Summary of this case from Chelsey Nelson Photography LLC v. Louisville/Jefferson Cnty. Metro Gov'tOpinion
NO. 2014-CA-001080-MR
04-08-2016
MOORISH SCIENCE TEMPLE OF AMERICA, INC. AND JOHN LEWIS-EL APPELLANTS v. LADONNA THOMPSON, COMMISSIONER, DON BOTTOM, WARDEN, AND JOANNA COULTER APPELLEES
BRIEF FOR APPELLANT: John Lewis-El, Pro se Burgin, Kentucky BRIEF FOR APPELLEE: Stafford Easterling Frankfort, Kentucky
NOT TO BE PUBLISHED APPEAL FROM FRANKLIN CIRCUIT COURT
HONORABLE THOMAS WINGATE, JUDGE
ACTION NO. 14-CI-00385 OPINION
AFFIRMING BEFORE: DIXON, D. LAMBERT, AND THOMPSON, JUDGES. D. LAMBERT, JUDGE: This matter is before the Court on appeal from an order entered by the Franklin Circuit Court dismissing the Complaint filed by the Appellant, John Lewis-El, who acted pro se at every stage of the proceedings, for failure to state a claim for which relief could be granted. For the reasons discussed herein, we affirm.
The Appellant's legal name is John Henry Lewis, and this fact is at the core of the instant dispute. --------
I. FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
The Appellant is currently serving a term of imprisonment in the custody of the Kentucky Department of Corrections (hereinafter "the Department"). At the time of the events giving rise to this appeal, he was housed at the Northpoint Training Center. His asserted claims all relate to the conditions of his incarceration, specifically, to an alleged deprivation of his right to free exercise of religion.
The Appellant is a member of the Moorish Science Temple faith, and has been since 2000. When he converted to this faith, he became subject to the requirement to append an "attribute or tribal name" to his legal last name. The precepts of his faith also forbid him from seeking a change in his legal name through administrative procedures of any kind.
This dispute originated on January 13, 2014, when the Appellant filed a grievance form with the institution. The form was rejected for procedural reasons: that his signature, which included his "attribute or tribal name," did not match his official legal name under which he was convicted. He filed a subsequent grievance form, making explicit that the difference between the signature and his legal name stemmed from his religious beliefs. The position of the Department did not change at any point in the process: a rule that inmates may not use titles absent a court order specifying the title is part of the inmate's legal name prohibits the Appellant's use of the appendage. The final such ruling came from the Commissioner of the Department of Corrections, and represented the final administrative action on the Appellant's grievance.
Having exhausted his administrative remedies, Appellant then sought judicial review of the administrative proceedings via "Petition for Declaration of Rights and/or Mandamus" filed in Franklin Circuit Court. The petition was filed on April 22, 2014. The Answer on behalf of the Department was filed on May 15, 2014. The Appellant moved for summary judgment on May 22, 2014. The Department moved for dismissal on June 24, 2014.
The trial court entered an order on June 24, 2014, denying the Appellant's motion and granting the Department's motion to dismiss. This appeal followed.
II. ANALYSIS
A. STANDARD OF REVIEW
The Kentucky Supreme Court conducted a thorough examination of the standard of review for motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief can be granted in 2010:
A motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted admits as true the material facts of the complaint. So a court should not grant the motion unless it appears the pleading party would not be entitled to relief under any set of facts which could be proved. Accordingly, the pleadings should be liberally construed in the light most favorable to the plaintiff, all allegations being taken as true. This exacting standard of review eliminates any need by the trial court to make findings of fact; rather, the question is purely a matter if law. Stated another way, the court must ask "if the facts
alleged in the complaint can be proved, would the plaintiff be entitled to relief?" Since a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim upon which relief may be granted is a pure question of law, a reviewing court owes no deference to a trial court's determination; instead an appellate court reviews the issue de novo.Fox v. Grayson, 317 S.W.3d 1, 7 (Ky. 2010) (internal citations and quotations omitted).
This Court must conduct a de novo review of the trial court's decision; therefore the Court must also consider the standard by which administrative decisions are reviewed by reviewing courts. When no errors of fact are alleged, "[t]he standard of review with regard to a judicial appeal of an administrative decision is limited to determining whether the decision was erroneous as a matter of law." Kroger Ltd. Partnership v. Cab. For Health and Family Serv., Commonwealth of Kentucky, 174 S.W.3d 516, 518 (Ky.App. 2005); Bd. of Comm'rs of City of Danville v. Davis, 238 S.W.3d 132 (Ky.App. 2007). "A well-supported motion for summary judgment can terminate litigation when, as a matter of law, it appears that it would be impossible for the responding party to produce evidence at trial warranting a judgment in his favor." Wymer v. J.H. Properties, Inc., 50 S.W.3d 195, 199 (Ky. 2001). Moreover, "[t]he party opposing summary judgment cannot rely on their own claims or arguments without significant evidence in order to prevent a summary judgment." Id. "[S]peculation and supposition are insufficient to justify submission of a case to the jury, and ... the question should be taken from the jury when the evidence is so unsatisfactory as to resort to surmise and speculation." Sparks v. Trustguard Ins. Co., 389 S.W.3d 121, 124 (Ky.App. 2012) (quoting O'Bryan v. Cave, 202 S.W.3d 585, 588 (Ky. 2006)).
B. THE TRIAL COURT DID NOT ERR IN DENYING THE
APPELLANT'S MOTION FOR DEFAULT JUDGMENT
The Appellant contends on appeal that the trial court acted inappropriately when denying his motion for summary judgment. His entire argument hinges on the Department's filing of its answer twenty four days after the filing of the Petition. The Appellant urges a highly literal reading of Rule 4.02 of the Kentucky Rules of Civil Procedure ("CR").
That rule provides that once a summons has been issued to a party named a defendant therein, it serves the purpose of ". . . notifying him that legal action has been filed against him and that unless a written defense is made by him or by an attorney in his behalf within 20 days following the day on which the summons is served on him a judgment may issue against him for the relief demanded." CR 4.02. The Kentucky Supreme Court, through the use of "may" rather than "must" in crafting the text of the rule, vested the trial courts with discretion as to when to issue judgments when a defendant is in default. Default judgments are disfavored by the courts. S.R. Blanton Dev., Inc. v. Investors Realty and Mgt. Co., Inc., 819 S.W.2d 727, 730 (Ky.App. 1991).
In addition to the general disfavor of default judgments, CR 55.04 explicitly precludes entry of a default judgment against either the Commonwealth or the United States absent evidence satisfactory to the trial court. The Appellant offered only argument and self-serving affidavits to support his motion, and the trial court was not satisfied from the record that Appellant had shown entitlement to judgment.
Additionally, the Appellant argues that the trial court erred in treating his pleading as a default judgment motion rather than a summary judgment motion. This action is consistent with the duty incumbent on trial courts to "liberally construe pro se pleadings to extract the [pro se litigant]'s intent and bring about a full adjudication of the relevant issues." Taylor v. Commonwealth, 354 S.W.3d 592, 594 (Ky.App. 2011). A motion for summary judgment would not have been procedurally appropriate at that point in the litigation, as neither party had been afforded an opportunity to conduct discovery. Benton v. Boyd & Boyd, PLLC, 387 S.W.3d 341 (Ky.App. 2012); Carberry v. Golden Hawk Transp. Co., 402 S.W.3d 556 (Ky.App. 2013).
The trial court therefore acted appropriately when treating the Appellant's summary judgment motion as a default judgment motion, and acted within its discretion in denying default judgment.
C. THE TRIAL COURT APPLIED THE INCORRECT LEGAL
STANDARD IN DISMISSING THE APPELLANT'S PETITION
As noted above, the standard of appellate review for a trial court's review of an administrative proceeding is limited in scope to a determination of whether an error of law is presented.
The trial court noted that "[a] prisoner retains the First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion" under Cruz v. Beto, 405 U.S. 319 (1972). However, the trial court likewise noted that the prohibition against a prisoner assuming a new name does not deprive such prisoner of the right to free exercise. Imam Ali Abdullah Akbar v. Canney, 634 F.2d 339 (6th Cir. 1980). There, the Sixth Circuit specifically held that "[w]e do not believe that any inmate has a constitutional right to dictate how prison officials keep their prison records." Id. at 340.
While the Appellant characterizes the Department's regulation as one which deprives him of free exercise because his faith requires the use of his new assumed surname, the trial court ruled that the regulation in question was not a violation of the First Amendment. In doing so, however, it examined the issues using rational basis review. The trial court found that the regulation was reasonably related to a legitimate, neutral government interest, and if an exception was crafted for the Appellant the Department would be unduly burdened with "administrative difficulties and confusion, which would confront prison officials in attempting to amend commitment papers of every prisoner who embraces [this as an aspect of their faith]." Id. The trial court concluded the Appellant, by his "refusal to use his legal name in a legal process that rationally requires it, [...] refuses the legitimate process that leads to his remedy."
In First Amendment jurisprudence, laws specifically targeting religious conduct are subject to strict scrutiny, requiring proof that a statute or regulation is narrowly tailored to effectuate a compelling government interest in order to be deemed valid. See Sherbert v. Verner, 374 U.S. 398 (1963). While the federal courts, for a brief period, applied a standard of review similar to rational basis review to free exercise cases where the challenged law was facially neutral (see e.g. Employment Div., Dept. of Human Res. of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990); Church of the Lukumi Babalu Aye, Inc. v. City of Hialeah, 508 U.S. 520 (1993)), with the passage of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act ("RFRA") (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000bb et seq.) and its replacement, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act ("RLUIPA") (42 U.S.C.A. § 2000cc et seq.), such a test has been superseded. Holt v. Hobbs, --- U.S. --- (2015); 135 S.Ct. 853 (2015). The Holt Court applied a more traditional strict scrutiny analysis, signaling a reversion to the pre-Babalu and Smith application.
Kentucky also passed an equivalent provision to the federal RFRA, KRS 446.350, which was not included in the Supreme Court's decision in City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997), which found the federal RFRA unconstitutional as applied to the states. Kentucky's statutory provision states in part: "a sincerely held religious belief may not be substantially burdened unless the government proves by clear and convincing evidence that it has a compelling governmental interest in infringing the specific act or refusal to act and has used the least restrictive means to further that interest." KRS 446.350. This is a codification by the legislature of the strict scrutiny test applied in case law.
D. THE TRIAL COURT'S APPLICATION OF RATIONAL BASIS
REVIEW WAS HARMLESS ERROR
The trial court reached the ultimate conclusion that the regulation was non-discriminatory and did not infringe on the Appellant's fundamental right to exercise his religion. This Court reaches the same result through different reasoning, specifically the application of the statutory strict scrutiny found in KRS 446.350.
Purely for the purpose of this analysis, this Court will assume the first prong has been met, and the regulation substantially burdens the Appellant's exercise of his faith.
The requirement that inmates use their legal names on official documents serves a governmental interest. It ensures accurate record keeping, which would include having an institutional knowledge of which inmates are housed together, their disciplinary histories, and any medical or nutritional needs. This knowledge, in turn, affects both inmate safety and institutional security. Inmate safety and institutional security are unquestionably the paramount goals of the Department. Indeed, safely and securely housing convicted prisoners during the service of their terms is the very purpose of the Department. The governmental interest at stake here is therefore compelling.
The next prong of the statutory strict scrutiny analysis is whether the regulation is the least restrictive means to achieve that compelling government interest. The Appellant contends that inmates are known primarily by their inmate identification numbers, and for that reason the name used or signature are irrelevant for identification purposes. Following his argument to its logical conclusion, his position is that the least restrictive means to meet the compelling government interest would be to eliminate the regulation entirely, and to allow any inmate to assume and sign any name imaginable in official documents as long as it was paired with an appropriate identification number.
This Court finds the Appellant's proposed solution impracticable, as it would hinder the compelling government interests noted above. Identifying an inmate by both name and number serves a legitimate purpose. The redundancy, which the Appellant argues against, in fact enables the Department to trace errors when a digit in an inmate's identification number is transposed, or other typographical or scrivener's error occurs. Requiring an inmate to consistently use his legal name in official documents is the least restrictive means to accomplish the compelling goal of accuracy in record keeping.
Even applying strict scrutiny, the most stringent standard of review available in civil rights cases, and affording the Appellant the benefit of an assumption that the first element is satisfied, the regulation still passes constitutional muster. It is the least restrictive means to accomplishing a compelling government interest.
This Court therefore concludes that the regulation is not a violation of the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Further, as this Court reached the same result as the trial court did when applying a higher standard, any error by the trial court is harmless.
III. CONCLUSION
The trial court thus correctly ruled that the Appellant is not entitled to relief as a matter of law. Because the Appellant did not argue that an unresolved issue of material fact as presented, which would preclude the entry of judgment, this Court cannot conclude the trial court committed error by dismissing the Appellant's claims for want of a compensable claim.
This Court, having reviewed the record, hereby AFFIRMS the judgment of the Franklin Circuit Court.
ALL CONCUR. BRIEF FOR APPELLANT: John Lewis-El, Pro se
Burgin, Kentucky BRIEF FOR APPELLEE: Stafford Easterling
Frankfort, Kentucky