(if, of course, the press account is accurate). The AP reports:
A Kentucky judge has been offering some drug and alcohol offenders the option of attending worship services instead of going to jail or rehab . . . .
“I don’t think there’s a church-state issue, because it’s not mandatory and I say worship services instead of church,” he said. . . .
Seems pretty “mandatory” to me. Sure, the offender doesn’t have to go to religious services; but if he says no, he’ll have to go to jail or rehab. Whether the condition is phrased as “You must go to religious services, or else we’ll send you to jail” or “You must go to jail, but we’ll let you get out of it by going to religious services,” the government is coercing people to go to religious services by threatening them with jail. Nor does it matter that he’s not picking the denomination; he’s still coercing people to engage in religious activity.
This issue has actually come up in the past, when the government has given prisoners special benefits if they go to Alcoholics Anonymous, a program that has a religious component; courts have generally — and in my view, rightly — held that such a program indeed violates the Establishment Clause, precisely because it coerces people to participate in religious activities.
The result would be different if the judge required people to do something, and there were both religious and nonreligious options. But here it sounds like the only option is to engage in religious practice — or go to jail or rehab. I’m not sure that going to worship services is an effective way of getting people to stop misbehaving. But whether or not it is, the government may not coerce people into religiosity, even as a tool in fighting drug and alcohol abuse.
Thanks to Sean Sirrine for the pointer.
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