Court agrees cops can withhold Bible from inmate

A U.S. court has opened the door to restrictions on religious practices that are not considered “mandatory” by the faith.

That’s the concern of the Rutherford Institute, which worked with other faith groups to ask the high court to overturn a lower court’s approval of a prison policy that deprived a Christian inmate of a Bible.

Conraad Hoever, held in Florida’s Franklin Correctional Institution, was placed in solitary confinement in 2013 for “disrespecting” a prison guard, and he asked to have a Bible with him.

Hoever, who “believes that he is called to study the Bible daily and that these daily devotionals prevent him from falling from grace,” had asked for one of the three Bibles he already owned.

The prison refused, only to relent and give him a Spanish-language Bible, which he could not read. Hoever then sued and lost in the courts.