This is the first I read about this case but it immediately reminded me of
Kaufman, James v. McCaughtry, Gary, 2005 (not the ‘pornography’ claim). The latter went to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals that ruled that the correctional facility had no legitimate reason for denying James Kaufman’s request to form an atheist study group. Their decision adopted the broad definition of ‘religion’ for purposes of the First Amendment that included atheistic beliefs and cited Supreme Court decision in
Wallace v. Jaffree, 1985, where the Court had “
unambiguously concluded that the individual freedom of conscience protected by the First Amendment embraces the right to select any religious faith or none at all.”
The defendants in this case similarly argued that their refusal of inmate’s request for an atheist group had nothing to do with religion but rather security, among other things. If I’m not mistaken it came down to numbers and that the demand did not justify the expenditure.
Given that the legal definition of religion now incorporates atheism and the DOD actually list atheism and agnosticism in their
list of recognised faiths and beliefs, the military kinda opened themselves up to more of these applications (unless, of course, DOD now purges its list of all inconvenient designations and/or the Supreme Court reverses its definition of religion.)