Is the First Amendment for Monotheists only?

[elfs]

In their opening arguments to the court, [The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation] argued before the court that Pagans are not deserving of equal civil rights as are provided adherents of the preferred faiths. In one of their first arguments to the court, the defendants said that certain traditional faiths are first tier faiths and that those faiths were meant to have equal rights and protections under the United States Constitution, but that all of the other faiths were second tier faiths, and were not meant to have the same equal rights and protections under the United States Constitution as the first tier faiths.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to decide if paganism and witchcraft were ever intended to receive the protections of the Religion Clauses.

Comments

[sianmink.livejournal.com]

so 9th CC is going to throw this out without wasting any more time on something so obviously unconstitutional, right? Right?

[dr-memory.livejournal.com]

The 9th CC is notoriously the most left-leaning of the CCAs, so the odds are good that they'll do just that.

It's not a 100% guarantee since it's a prison case, and courts are notorious for giving absurdly wide leeway to prisons, but while IANAL, it looks to me like the CA-DCR has picked just about the worst possible grounds on which to argue their case here. If they'd made some half-assed claim that pagan religions encouraged prisoner violence or insubordination, they might have gotten away with it, but a magical discovery that the establishment clause only applies to Abrahamic faiths? Rotsa ruck with that bullshit, kids.