Worship gathering rights have been restored for prison inmates in New York as New York State prisons are no longer forbidding inmates to gather for religious worship following pressure from the Thomas More Society. Prison residents have been denied the right to attend in-person church services on the correctional facility campus for almost a year, despite the fact that groups have been allowed to assemble and gather for recreational and rehabilitation programs and communal meals. Thomas More Society attorneys are representing two of those inmates. The firm issued a demand letter to New York’s Department of Correction & Community Supervision pointing out the discrimination that was being practiced by denying inmates the ability to participate in basic religious worship services. That will change with the resumption of group church services this weekend for prisoners of all faith denominations.

“We are pleased that prison officials and state authorities have recognized that they cannot deny prison inmates their free exercise of religion while allowing them to gather en masse for meals and secular activities,” explained Kimberley Mathis, Thomas More Society Special Counsel. “There is no reason that the same hygienic and social distancing implemented at secular group functions cannot be practiced for communal worship, particularly where many chapels and other places of worship have an even larger occupancy capacity than other areas where prisoners were permitted to gather. When we pointed this out and explained the law, counsel for the department, Cathy Sheehan, was very agreeable and assured us that church services at the correctional facility will resume this Sunday. I have every reason to believe that Ms. Sheehan is working hard to ensure that group worship services resume for the inmates.”

The Thomas More Society letter, addressed to the department’s Acting Director Anthony J. Annucci and Eastern New York Correctional Facility Warden and Superintendent William Lee, formally demanded that the state immediately restore religious services within the correctional facilities, and further repeal and replace any policies and/or procedures enforcing restrictions on worship.

Mathis points out that the United States Supreme Court’s November 25, 2020, decision in Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn v. Cuomo made it clear that restrictions on worship services that exceed restrictions on comparable secular activities are unequivocally unconstitutional. The high court declared that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s occupancy limits on worship service attendance were in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Cuomo, his administration, and all agencies of the State of New York were banned from continuing to enforce those restrictions.

“The policy forbidding worship services that had been imposed at New York’s Department of Correction & Community Supervision and the Eastern New York Correctional Facility violated the prisoners’ First Amendment rights and unconstitutionally deprived inmates of the fundamental rights it guarantees,” added Mathis.

Read the demand letter issued December 16, 2020, by the Thomas More Society on behalf of Eastern New York Correctional Facility inmates Arthur Tomlinson and Peter Grieco, to Anthony J. Annucci, Acting Commissioner of New York’s Department of Correction & Community Supervision, and William Lee, Warden and Superintendent of Eastern New York Correctional Facility, here.