Atheism is a religion ...

[D. Scarlatti]

... if only for the purposes of the First Amendment.

A Wisconsin inmate wins in the 7th Circuit today, after prison authorities denied him the ability to form an in-house atheist study group:

Kaufman v. McCaughtry

The discussion takes place on pages two through eight.* It cites a lot of cases, but is mostly a non-technical discourse on what atheism is, in particular as it applies to religious freedom in the U.S. (or at in least Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana, the 7th Circuit's jurisdiction).

* Interested readers may wish to continue on to the court's brief engagement with the matter of the plaintiff's gay S&M porn.

[viscousmemories]

That link doesn't work for me, but this one does. (Assuming it's the same opinion.) Reading it soon...

[D. Scarlatti]

I see that. Bastards changed the link. Here it is here:

Kaufman v. McCaughtry

You found the lower court opinion, which the 7th Circuit overturned. Good job!

Interesting ... the district court opinion you located names as a defendant Jamyi Witch, who is, or was, the coordinator of prison chaplains for Wisconsin. I remember when she first got that job; the local fundies here went bananas.

ETA: Very interesting ... the atheist was religiously oppressed by a Wiccan! Another reason why the government should just stay out of all this religious nonsense.

[viscousmemories]

Erm... that's the same link.

[D. Scarlatti]

It's not, but I have no idea what the hell's going on with it. Must be Bill Gates's fault.

To access the opinion, go here and type "Kaufman" in the "last name" search box.

[viscousmemories]

That didn't work for me either. It said "too many cases". But I found it by doing a cases uploaded this week search.

I think this link will work.

[D. Scarlatti]

Weird. The url that appears when I hover over your link (which contains the case number, and works for me as well) opens the .pdf file at exactly the same url as the link I posted above.

Something to do with my copying the urls with "/tmp" in them, probably. No idea why you got "too many cases" at the 7th Circuit's search engine though.

Anyway ...

[viscousmemories]

Man, that lower court opinion is virtually illegible compared to the other one.

Anyway that's a fascinating case. I liked this little injection of humor:

The district court went astray when it evaluated Kaufman’s claim on the assumption that he wanted to form a nonreligious group. Based on that premise, it held that the defendants were entitled to assess Kaufman’s proposal under the more restrictive set of regulations that applies to normal social groups.

Had the premise been correct, the conclusion would have followed: no one says that a person who wants to form a chess club at the prison is entitled under the Establishment Clause to have the application evaluated as if chess were a religion, no matter how devoted he is to the game.

[Ensign Steve]

That's cool. Maybe next they'll have atheist chaplains in the military.