Photo illustration by DNY59, iStock) A 7.5-year-old lawsuit that began when the Denver Sheriff Department’s chaplain denied a kosher diet to a detainee has ended on Monday, after the federal appeals court based in Colorado ruled that the chaplain deserved immunity for any infringement on the man’s free exercise of his religion. The decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals from the 10th Circuit is the third religious freedom ruling arising from Colorado in two weeks. The constitutional claim of Craig C. Ralston boiled down to a single footnote in a previous 10th Circuit decision that drastically altered the trajectory of his case. “The famous footnote 3!” observed Judge Jerome A. Holmes during the oral argument in Ralston’s case. Ralston was arrested and booked into the Denver Detention Center in December 2013. He indicated he did not need a special religious diet, but subsequently filed a grievance saying he required kosher meals. The chaplain, Hosea Cannon Jr., was responsible for coordinating detainees’ diet requests and he denied Ralston’s on Jan. 2, 2014. Ralston, who believes in Messianic Judaism, filed another request as well as a federal complaint against Cannon alleging the denial of a kosher diet amounted to religious […]
