"The Illinois Lawrence Correctional Center is a medium-security adult prison facility in Sumner, Illinois with approximately 2,000 inmates. Those inmates proclaim numerous different religious affiliations (46 as of May 2009). When Mannie Maddox arrived as an inmate in early 2004, he was a member of the African Hebrew Israelite (AHI) faith. AHI was one of the 17 religious affiliations for which Lawrence offered regularly scheduled services. Maddox attended services for about six months, until they were terminated. Maddox filed a grievance, asserting a denial of his right to exercise his religion. The prison denied the grievance on the grounds that Lawrence canceled the services for budgetary reasons. Maddox appealed the decision through two more stages of review without success. The prison chaplain also denied Maddox’ request to allow the AHI inmates to meet without a formal service. The prison requires that such meetings be supervised and the chaplain's schedule could not accommodate another religious gathering. Maddox filed a § 1983 complaint against the chaplain and the prison wardens alleging violations of his First and Fourteenth Amendment rights. Judge Gilbert (S.D. Ill.) restructured the pro se complaint into four counts. He dismissed for failure to state a claim the counts relating to discrimination in the allocation of the prison budget. He granted summary judgment on the two counts alleging failure to provide reasonable access to religious materials and failure to provide worship services, concluding that Maddox failed to exhaust his administrative remedies. Maddox appeals."
See:
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