Court Upholds Congressional Spending Clause Power To Protect Rights

The 11th Circuit, in a decision authored by Judge William Pryor, has ruled that Congress did not exceed its authority under the Spending Clause of the Constitution in enacting §3 of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA).

Benning v. Georgia, ___F.3d___, 2004 WL 2749172 (11th Cir. Dec. 2, 2004).

This brings to 4-1 the count of circuit courts in favor of the constitutionality of §3 of RLUIPA. The court held that Congress’s spending conditions need meet only a “minimal standard of rationality.” The issue has important ramifications for seniors, the disabled, and others protected by anti-discrimination statutes, as the Spending Clause has increasingly become Congress’s primary source of authority to protect individuals who receive scant protection under the Constitution itself.

Plaintiff, an inmate in the Georgia prison system, asserted that as a “Torah observant Jew” he was being prevented from fulfilling his religious duties, such as eating only kosher food, and wearing a yarmulke. Georgia moved to dismiss and argued that §3 of RLUIPA exceeds the authority of Congress under the Spending and Commerce Clauses, and violates the Tenth Amendment and the Establishment Clause. The United States intervened to defend the constitutionality of RLUIPA.

RLUIPA is Congress’s latest action in a long-running feud with the Supreme Court over the protection given individuals whose religious exercise is burdened by state action. In Employment Div. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990), the Court required only rational basis review of a neutral law of general applicability (criminalizing peyote) that had an incidental burden on religious exercise. In response, Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (“RFRA”), which required strict scrutiny of such laws. The Court then struck down RFRA, finding that Congress exceeded its powers under §5 of the Fourteenth Amendment because it expanded, rather than just enforced, the constitutional right to free exercise of religion that had just been defined in Smith. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997). Congress responded this time by enacting RLUIPA, which reimposes the strict scrutiny standard on actions that burden the religious rights of institutionalized persons (in section 3, at issue here, 42 U.S.C. §2000cc-1), and on land use decisions (in section 2 of RLUIPA, 42 U.S.C. §2000cc(a)(1) and (b)). In both cases, RLUIPA applies, inter alia, to programs or activities that receive federal funds and to governmental actions that affect interstate commerce. That is, Congress sought to avoid the Boerne holding by grounding its authority in the Spending and Commerce Clauses, rather than in the Fourteenth Amendment.

This scenario has parallels for the rights of the elderly and disabled under the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (“ADEA”) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (“ADA”). The Supreme Court relied on Boerne in finding that Congress exceeded its Fourteenth Amendment powers when it made states liable under the ADEA and Title I of the ADA (discrimination in employment), because those statutes expand, rather than enforce, the rights of the elderly and disabled under the Equal Protection Clause. Kimel v. Florida Bd. of Regents, 528 U.S. 62 (2000) (ADEA); Board of Trustees v. Garrett, 531 U.S. 356, 363 (2001) (ADA). Although earlier this year the Court upheld Title II of the ADA (discrimination in public services and accommodations), it did so only as applied to the fundamental right of access to the courts. Tennessee v. Lane, 124 S.Ct. 1978 (2004). Lower courts have relied on Lane to strike down Title II of the ADA as applied to state services and accommodations that do not involve fundamental rights.

Yet as with RFRA and RLUIPA, Congress has largely avoided the holdings of Kimel and Garrett, and the limited holding of Lane, by using its Spending Clause authority to impose the ADEA and §504 of the Rehabilitation Act (which largely parallels the ADA), as well as other anti-discrimination provisions, on state programs and activities that receive federal funds. 42 U.S.C. §§ 2000d-7. Thus, the scope of Congress’s power under the Spending Clause is of keen interest to the elderly, disabled and other victims of discrimination.

The Eleventh Circuit had no problem finding that RLUIPA is a proper exercise of Congress’s Spending Clause authority. Although “conditions on federal grants might be illegitimate if they are unrelated to the federal interest in particular national projects or programs,” South Dakota v. Dole, 483 U.S. 203, 207 (1987), the Eleventh Circuit found the relationship between the conditions and the federal interest need only meet “a minimal standard of rationality.” That standard was easily met, because protecting religious exercise of prisoners is a rational goal, and the United States “has a substantial interest in ensuring that state prisons that receive federal funds protect the federal civil rights of prisoners.”

The court also rejected the state’s argument that “the extensive conditions imposed by RLUIPA are not in proportion to the small amount of federal funds dedicated to state correctional systems.” The court found “there is no standard of proportionality for spending legislation.”

In addition to upholding RLUIPA under the Spending Clause, the Eleventh Circuit in Benning also concluded that the statute did not violate the Tenth Amendment by infringing on areas reserved to the states, nor did it violate the Establishment Clause.

Although the Benning decision did not cite the Supreme Court’s holding earlier this year in Sabri v. United States, 124 S.Ct. 1941 (2004), Sabri also supports the extensiveness of Congress’s Spending Clause authority. In Sabri, the Court held that a statute criminalizing bribery of officials of government agencies that receive federal funds did not require prosecutors to show a connection between the object of the bribery and the federal funds. The majority opinion, joined by the entire Court other than Justice Thomas, concluded that that statute was a constitutional exercise of Congress’s Spending Clause authority because it was a “rational means” of securing Congress’s objectives. Justice Thomas argued for a stricter standard than mere rationality.

Supporting Congress’s authority under the Spending clause is especially important to groups like the elderly and the disabled who must primarily look to Congress, rather than the Constitution, for protection.