The United States Supreme Court has agreed to hear Holt v. Hobbs, the case of a Muslim prisoner in Arkansas who claims that prison officials violated his religious freedom under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act when they enforced their grooming policy against him. The policy forbids the growing of a beard. Here’s the opinion of the 8th Circuit.

The case is important because it zeroes in on the government’s burden under RLUIPA, and whether it needs to consider alternatives to its policy as well as policies that other prison systems have tried in order to satisfy the least restrictive means leg of RLUIPA. In 2005, the Supreme Court held unanimously in Cutter v. Wilkinson that RLUIPA does not violate the Establishment Clause.