Case Information
*1 Before W OOD , Chief Judge , and P OSNER and F LAUM , Cir- cuit Judges .
P OSNER , Circuit Judge
. The plaintiff, a prisoner in Illinois’s Pontiac Correctional Center, appeals from the denial of his motion in the district court for a preliminary injunction that would allow him to wear a religious medal called a “penta- cle medallion”—a five-pointed silver star set in a circle less than an inch in diameter. Here is a typical such medallion: *2 The pentacle medallion is to the Wiccan religion what the cross is to many Christians; the plaintiff claims that it pro- tects his body and his spirit against “harm, evil entities, and negative energy.” The Wiccan religion (or “Wicca”) is a neo-pagan, poly- theistic, and pantheistic faith based on beliefs that predate Christianity. See O’Bryan v. Bureau of Prisons , 349 F.3d 399, 400 (7th Cir. 2003), citing Phyllis W. Curlott, Wicca and Na- ture Spirituality, in Sourcebook of the World’s Religions 113 (Joel Beversluis ed., 3d ed. 2000); see also Selena Fox, “Introduc- tion to the Wiccan Religion and Contemporary Paganism,” Circle Sanctuary , www.circlesanctuary.org/index.php/about- paganism/introduction-to-the-wiccan-religion-and-contemp orary-paganism (visited July 12, 2016, as was the other web- site cited in this opinion). Although there is variation within the Wiccan community, most Wiccans practice witchcraft, worship nature, meditate, and participate in rituals celebrat- ing the new and full moon. John Gordon Melton, “Wicca,” *3 Encyclopædia Britannica , www.britannica.com/topic/Wicca. Courts have recognized that “the Church of Wicca occupies a place in the lives of its members parallel to that of more conventional religions.” E.g., Dettmer v. Landon , 799 F.2d 929, 932 (4th Cir. 1986).
The plaintiff, who is a Wiccan, obtained a one-inch pen- tacle medallion attached to a chain to wear around his neck. The medallion was small enough to comply with prison reg- ulations regarding jewelry worn by prisoners. But the day after issuing him a jewelry retention permit the prison con- fiscated the medallion, precipitating this suit against the prison’s warden under the Religious Land Use and Institu- tionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc–1. The plaintiff filed this suit after failing to obtain relief through the prison’s administrative process.
The warden’s first line of defense was that the Illinois Department of Corrections prohibits inmates from pos- sessing “five and six-point star symbols” because they’re us- able as gang identifiers; forbidding them is intended “to cur- tail gang members … within the institution from communi- cating with one another” and to protect prisoners from being mistaken as gang members and possibly attacked by mem- bers of rival gangs (that is, rival to the gang to which the prisoner victims are mistakenly believed to belong).
Without addressing the merits of either the suit or the de- fense, the district judge refused to issue a preliminary in- junction. His grounds were threefold: the plaintiff had not clearly demonstrated that he lacked an adequate remedy at law, did not face “an irreparable harm” (because he was be- ing denied “only one aspect of his ability to practice his reli- gion while his litigation is pending”), and was asking for in- *4 junctive relief that would require the defendants to act, ra- ther than just preserving the status quo. We have trouble seeing the force of these points—(1) what an adequate reme- dy at law would be (monetary compensation for the loss of a religious entitlement?); (2) how forbidding a religious ob- servance important to a devout practitioner could be thought harmless to him because other observances re- mained open to him (an argument rejected in Holt v. Hobbes 135 S. Ct. 853, 862 (2015), which stated that “RLUIPA’s ‘sub- stantial burden’ inquiry asks whether the government has substantially burdened religious exercise … not whether the RLUIPA claimant is able to engage in other forms of reli- gious exercise”), especially observances that might be much less important to his religion; and (3) how the plaintiff could obtain any relief unless the warden was enjoined from violat- ing RLUIPA.
RLUIPA states that “no government shall impose a sub- stantial burden on the religious exercise of a person residing in or confined to an institution … even if the burden results from a rule of general applicability, unless the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that person— (1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and (2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that com- pelling governmental interest.” 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc–1(a). The “unless” clause doesn’t seem applicable to the plaintiff in this case, who is willing to wear his medallion under his shirt whenever he’s outside his cell to protect himself from being identified as a gang member. Cf. Schlemm v. Wall , 784 F.3d 362, 366 (7th Cir. 2015). And while the warden contends that other inmates might see the medallion while the plain- tiff is showering, nothing in the record supports this conten- tion; there isn’t even evidence that the plaintiff ever wears his *5 medallion in the shower, or that the wearing of a pentacle medallion, whether openly or under one’s shirt, by any pris- oner at Pontiac has ever caused a problem.
The plaintiff tendered an affidavit from another Wiccan prisoner, who had prevailed in a suit to prevent the confisca- tion of his pentacle medallion. See Goodman v. Walker No. 03-CV-202-WDS (S.D. Ill. Aug. 13, 2007). The affiant at- tested that he’d worn his medallion in maximum security prisons since 1998 without ever experiencing threats or vio- lence from other inmates.
The plaintiff has demonstrated his entitlement to the pre- liminary injunction that he is seeking. His freedom of reli- gion has been gratuitously infringed by the prison. The judgment of the district court is reversed with instructions to grant the preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiff.
R EVERSED AND R EMANDED , WITH I NSTRUCTIONS