Gitmo prisoners cite Hobby Lobby ruling in religious liberty lawsuit

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Lawyers representing Guantanamo Bay prisoners are now invoking the recent Burwell v. Hobby Lobby ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that if corporations are allowed to have religious rights, so should detainees.

The motions, which were filed in Washington, D.C., on behalf of Ahmed Rabbani of Pakistan and Emad Hassan of Yemen, asked the court to end the military’s policy of denying Gitmo prisoners the right to observe communal prayer during Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. Two separate courts have previously upheld restrictions on the religious expression of prisoners, arguing that Gitmo detainees are nonresident aliens and thus do not qualify as “persons” under the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (RFRA). But the new filing points out that this position is inconsistent with last week’s Supreme Courts ruling, which granted religious rights to a corporate “person” — Hobby Lobby — under RFRA.

“Hobby Lobby makes clear that all persons—human and corporate, citizen and foreigner, resident and alien—enjoy the special religious free exercise protections of the RFRA,” the filing reads. “Guantanamo Bay detainees, as flesh-and-blood human beings, are surely ‘individuals,’ and thus are no less ‘person[s]‘ than are the for-profit corporations in Hobby Lobby or the resident noncitizens whom Hobby Lobby gives as an example of persons to whom the RFRA must apply.”
“Thus, Hobby Lobby puts it beyond reasonable dispute that, as ‘person[s]‘ protected by the RFRA, Guantanamo Bay detainees enjoy rights of religious free exercise, including the right to pray in congregation.”

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