Transgender Inmate Sues North Carolina Prison for the Right to Practice Witchcraft Behind Bars
By The Blaze. A North Carolina transgender female inmate filed a lawsuit against the prison for allegedly not allowing her to practice Wicca, also known as witchcraft, the Charlotte Observer reported.
Jennifer Ann Jasmaine, 40, claimed in the suit that the prison chaplains are violating “her” constitutional rights to practice “her” religion and that the institution has refused to provide Wiccan foods for “her” to eat.
“Ms. Jasmaine’s religion is not just her religion. It’s her way of life,” the lawsuit said. “This is the path in which she has taken.”
Jasmaine, who filed the handwritten lawsuit earlier this month, is seeking a jury trial, along with $1 in damages from each of the prison’s chaplains.
The lawsuit alleges that Lanesboro Correctional Institution, an all-male prison, allows Christians to worship six times each week and Native Americans are allowed to hold their rituals three times a week. (Read more from “Transgender Inmate Sues North Carolina Prison for the Right to Practice Witchcraft Behind Bars” HERE)
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Transgender Inmate Sues to Practice Witchcraft at Notorious All-Male N.C. Prison
By The Charlotte Observer. . .Under state policy, individual prisons are required to provide “reasonable religious menu accommodations” to inmates practicing religious dietary laws.
Not happening, says Jasmaine. According to her complaint, she has requested and been denied the strict vegan diet that adheres to her spiritual practice. She says prison officials told her if she wanted vegan meals, she needed to become a Rastafarian or a Buddhist.
“The plaintiff, Ms. Jasmaine, shouldn’t have to change her religion to get on the proper diet,” she writes in her suit.
Jasmaine says she is entitled to court protection to practice witchcraft, which she says has been “discriminated against and persecuted for hundreds of years without just cause.”
She says the prison has further limited her practice by restricting her services to the eight Wicca holy festivals, or “sabbats,” held each calendar year. (Read more from “Transgender Inmate Sues to Practice Witchcraft at Notorious All-Male N.C. Prison” HERE)
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