Prison can’t serve new menu to Jewish inmate
A federal judge issued an injunction Friday that bars the Nevada Department of Corrections from serving its new “common fare” menu to an Orthodox Jewish inmate who adheres to a kosher diet.
U.S. District Judge Gloria Navarro also ordered the department to ask the other 292 prisoners who receive kosher meals whether they want to be included in the injunction.
“I don’t feel comfortable making that decision for them,” the judge said.
The department has announced its plan to implement the new menu on Feb. 21, but inmate Howard Ackerman contends in a lawsuit that the meals will not be kosher and will violate his First Amendment right of religious freedom.
“The menu has sausage on it,” said Ackerman’s lawyer, Jacob Hafter. “Are you kidding me?”
Those who adhere to a kosher diet do not eat pork. Prison officials insist the menu will be kosher and say it will save the department about $1.5 million in fiscal 2013.
“There is quite a bit of funding here that could be saved,” Navarro said Friday.
But many courts have ruled that cost savings do not justify denying the requests of inmates who ask for kosher meals, Hafter argued.
“This really to me doesn’t have anything to do with prisoner rights,” he told the Review-Journal. “This is defending our Constitution.”
The lawyer first sued the department on Ackerman’s behalf in June. At a hearing later that month, attorneys involved in the case said they had reached an agreement that eliminated the need for a restraining order.
That detente ended on Jan. 3, when Hafter filed an amended complaint against the department. Since then, both sides have filed a flurry of documents in the case.
Navarro said she had to color-code the documents, which totaled more than 1,000 pages, to keep track of them as she prepared for Friday’s hearing, which lasted more than three hours. The judge said the case involves serious questions and could set a legal precedent for similar cases in the future.
She has scheduled an entire day on April 18 to hear evidence related to Hafter’s request to certify the case as a class action. Hafter, an Orthodox Jew who is representing Ackerman free of charge, said he has put “several hundred hours” into the case in hopes of securing protection for all inmates who want kosher meals.
“I’m not doing this for one prisoner,” he said after Friday’s hearing. “We’ve done this from the beginning as a case that’s meant to preserve the constitutional rights of all prisoners in Nevada.”
Nevada prisons house about 12,500 inmates.
Ackerman, 51, is serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole in a kidnapping case.
The amended complaint accused prison officials of retaliating against Ackerman after he filed his original lawsuit. It alleged they retaliated against Ackerman by transferring him from the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City to the Lovelock Correctional Center and by ending the availability of kosher food.
At a hearing last month, Senior Deputy Attorney General William Geddes insisted Ackerman had been receiving the same menu. He also said Ackerman’s transfer was appropriate.
Geddes declined to answer questions after Friday’s hearing.
Department spokesman Steven Suwe said the common fare menu “is designed to encompass all religious-needs diets” and will replace the current kosher menu.
Hafter argued that the new menu will not be kosher because it will lack rabbinic supervision.
Six Orthodox Jewish rabbis from the Las Vegas area attended Friday’s hearing.
According to a declaration prepared by Deborah Byberg-Reed, deputy director of support services for the Department of Corrections, the department spent about $171,000 on kosher meals in fiscal 2011 and already has spent more than $367,000 on kosher meals this fiscal year.
The projected number of inmates participating in religious-needs meals in fiscal 2013 is 559, according to the declaration.
The projected cost for providing the current kosher menu to that number of inmates in fiscal 2013 is about
$3.1 million, while the projected cost of providing the common fare menu is
$1.6 million.
Keeping kosher is an “essential tenet” of Orthodox Judaism, according to Ackerman’s lawsuit.
Those who adhere to a kosher diet do not eat pork, shellfish or certain birds. Also, meat and dairy products may not be eaten together. Although fruits and vegetables are kosher, they may not come into contact with nonkosher food, utensils or dishes.
Geddes questioned Ackerman’s sincerity Friday, saying department records show that the inmate has bought nonkosher items in the past.
But Hafter said the state has presented no evidence showing that Ackerman either ordered or ate the items in question.
Contact reporter Carri Geer Thevenot at cgeer@review journal.com or 702-384-8710.
