Ashaheed v. Currington

For reasons similar to those argued in IJ’s amicus brief, the Tenth Circuit denied qualified immunity to a prison officer who violated a Muslim man’s First Amendment religious exercise rights. The Court refused to require Mr. Ashaheed to produce factually identical precedent to overcome qualified immunity. Instead, it held that religious discrimination is obviously unconstitutional, even if no prior case involved the same misconduct. And it held that qualified immunity was particularly inappropriate because the officer violated the prison’s own religious-practice policy.