WASHINGTON — Supreme Court justices appeared united Tuesday as they picked apart prison rules in Arkansas that allow full afros and mustaches but no beards in a case about a Muslim inmate’s claim that his religious beliefs require that he be allowed to keep a half-inch beard.
The court heard arguments in its first religious liberty case since the Hobby Lobby case bitterly divided the justices in June over whether family-owned corporations could mount religious objections to paying for women’s contraceptives under the health care overhaul.
There was no such division evident in the courtroom Tuesday as several justices were openly skeptical of arguments made by a lawyer for Arkansas in defense of the state’s no-beard policy, which has no exception for religious beliefs.
The state has a legitimate security interest in prohibiting beards because prisoners can hide items in them and change their appearance by shaving, Arkansas Deputy Attorney General David Curran said.
Justice Samuel Alito, sounding like the prosecutor he once was, suggested a simple solution to the concealment issue: Give the inmate a comb and instruct him to comb the beard. “If there’s anything in there, if there’s a SIM card in there or a revolver or anything else you think can be hidden in a half-inch beard, a tiny revolver, it’ll fall out,” Alito said to laughter.
Curran agreed: “That sounds like something that could be done.”
Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also elicited some agreement from the Arkansas lawyer when she said, “You have no comparable rule about hair on one’s head, where it seems more could be hidden than in the beard.”
Gregory Holt, 39, serving a life sentence for a brutal assault on his girlfriend, argued that Muslim beliefs mean he should grow a full beard but offered a half-inch beard as a compromise because California allows Muslim inmates to wear beards of that length.
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Antonin Scalia were among those on the bench who sounded frustrated with the limited nature of what they were being asked to decide.
“I don’t want to do these cases half-inch by half-inch,” Scalia said.
