DePaola v. Virginia Department Of Corrections et al

Filing 51

OPINION and ORDER denying 45 Motion to Alter Judgment. Signed by Judge James P. Jones on 6/17/2015. (slt)

IN THE UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT
FOR THE WESTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA
ROANOKE DIVISION
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ERIC J. DePAOLA,
Plaintiff,
v.
VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF
CORRECTIONS, ET AL.,
Defendants.

Case No. 7:12CV00592
OPINION AND ORDER
By: James P. Jones
United States District Judge

Eric J. DePaola, Pro Se Plaintiff; J. Michael Parsons, Assistant Attorney
General, Office of the Attorney General of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia, for
Defendants.
This closed civil action is before me on plaintiff Eric J. DePaola’s motion
under Rule 60(b) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure. After review of the
record, I conclude that DePaola’s motion must be denied.
I.
DePaola, an inmate at Virginia’s Red Onion State Prison (
“Red Onion
”)
proceeding pro se, filed this action under 42 U.S.C. §1983 against the Virginia
Department of Corrections (
“VDOC and a number of its employees. When the
”)
case was transferred to me in May 2014, the only remaining claim was DePaola’s
allegation that the VDOC Common Fare diet includes foods that are inconsistent
with his particular religious dietary requirements, in violation of his rights under

the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (
“RLUIPA 42 U.S.C.
”),
§2000cc-1, et seq., and the First Amendment.
In a previous opinion, the court had noted:
[I]t is impossible to discern from the current record whether there are
differences between the dietary requirements of Nation of Islam and
other Muslim sects and, if so, whether the common fare diet is
nonetheless sufficient. The defendants also fail to indicate whether
accommodating Nation of Islam dietary requirements would be
feasible and nutritionally adequate, the cost of altering the common
fare menu to accommodate DePaola’s alleged religious needs, or the
potential cost of accommodating numerous strands of religious dietary
restrictions.
(Op. 6, May 2, 2014, ECF No. 35 (footnote omitted).) I directed the defendants to
supplement their motion by May 21, 2014, and directed DePaola to file any
response within 14 days thereafter.

The defendants filed their supplemental

motion, but the court did not receive any additional response from DePaola. Some
weeks later, I considered the evidence in the record and entered judgment for the
defendants. DePaola v. Va. Dep’t of Corr., No. 7:12CV00592, 2014 WL 3956108
(W.D. Va. Aug. 12, 2014). No notice of appeal was filed.
Three months after the case closed, DePaola filed his present motion. The
record now indicates that in June 2014, DePaola mailed a response to the
defendants’ May 2014 supplement; the defendants received his response, but the
court did not, because DePaola addressed it to the court’s prior post office box,
which had been discontinued. When the copy of the response intended for the
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court was returned to DePaola as undeliverable, he remailed the response and a
motion asking for it to be considered timely filed to the court, again addressed to
the discontinued post office box. After DePaola received his copy of the Opinion
and Order granting summary judgment for the defendants in August 2014, he took
no action to appeal or challenge this ruling. When the post office again returned
the response to DePaola as undeliverable, he threw the documents away.
In November 2014, after DePaola learned the court’s correct street address,
he filed his present Rule 60(b) motion. He asserted that because he was never
notified of the court’s address change, I should vacate my ruling for the defendants
and reconsider their Motion for Summary Judgment in light of DePaola’s
supplemental response. I took DePaola’s motion under advisement and directed the
defendants to respond and to provide a copy of DePaola’s June 2014 summary
judgment response, which they did. DePaola then filed a reply brief, making the
matter ripe for consideration.
II.
Rule 60(b) specifies the limited reasons that a district court may “relieve a
party . . . from a final judgment. These grounds are:
”
(1) mistake, inadvertence, surprise, or excusable neglect;
(2) newly discovered evidence that, with reasonable diligence, could
not have been discovered in time to move for a new trial under Rule
59(b);
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(3) fraud . . . , misrepresentation, or misconduct by an opposing party;
(4) the judgment is void;
(5) the judgment has been satisfied, released or discharged; it is based
on an earlier judgment that has been reversed or vacated; or applying
it prospectively is no longer equitable; or
(6) any other reason that justifies relief.
DePaola does not state facts seeking relief from judgment under subsections (2),
(3), (4), or (5). The only relevant subsections here are “mistake, inadvertence, . . .
or excusable neglect under subsection (1) or “any other reason that justifies relief
”
”
under subsection (6).
As a threshold issue, however, a movant seeking relief under any subsection
of Rule 60(b) must first demonstrate that the motion is timely, that he has a
meritorious claim or defense, that the opposing party will not suffer unfair
prejudice by having the judgment set aside, and that exceptional circumstances
warrant relief from the judgment. See Robinson v. Wix Filtration Corp., 599 F.3d
403, 412 n.12 (4th Cir. 2010). Only if the movant meets these threshold conditions
will the court determine whether the movant has satisfied “one of the six
enumerated grounds for relief under Rule 60(b). Nat’l Credit Union Admin. Bd. v.
”
Gray, 1 F.3d 262, 266 (4th Cir. 1993).

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The defendants argue that because DePaola has not demonstrated in his
motion that he has a meritorious claim on summary judgment, he is not entitled to
relief under Rule 60(b). I agree.
III.
It is undisputed that DePaola signed a VDOC Common Fare diet agreement
in December 2007, stating that this diet was consistent with his Muslim religious
beliefs at that time. Sometime in 2009, DePaola adopted the beliefs of the Nation
of Islam (
“NOI a sect of the Muslim faith. He filed this lawsuit in December
”),
2012, complaining that the VDOC Common Fare diet includes foods that his NOI
beliefs prohibit: white bread (as opposed to the 100% whole wheat bread allegedly
required by NOI beliefs), peanut products, cottage cheese (if it contains alcohol),
grapefruit, white rice, and peas. He claimed that he was forced to choose between
eating Common Fare meals and violating his beliefs or complying with his
religious dietary beliefs and foregoing numerous food items, which left him
without sufficient calories. DePaola asserted that this situation violated his rights
under RLUIPA and the First Amendment, and claimed that Red Onion officials
should provide him with a diet consistent with his NOI beliefs.
RLUIPA provides that:
No government shall impose a substantial burden on the religious
exercise of a person residing in or confined to an institution . . . unless
the government demonstrates that imposition of the burden on that
person --5-

(1) is in furtherance of a compelling governmental interest; and
(2) is the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling
governmental interest.
42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-1(a). 1 The plaintiff must first show a substantial burden on his
exercise of sincerely held religious beliefs. §2000cc-2(b); Lovelace v. Lee, 472
F.3d 174, 185-87 (4th Cir. 2006). “[A] substantial burden on religious exercise
occurs when a state or local government . . . put[s] substantial pressure on the
adherent to modify his behavior and to violate his beliefs. Id. at 187 (internal
”
quotation marks, citation, and footnote omitted).
If the inmate demonstrates that a policy places a substantial burden on his
religious practice, the defendants must then show that the policy is the least
restrictive means of furthering a compelling governmental interest. Id. at 189. I
must give due deference to officials’ sworn affidavits explaining why a policy is the
least restrictive means to further compelling penological interests such as “good
order, security and discipline, consistent with consideration of costs and limited
resources. Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709, 723 (2005) (internal quotation
”
marks, citation, and footnote omitted).
In granting summary judgment for the defendants, I found that DePaola had
not demonstrated a religious basis for his desire to avoid the specified foods or
1

As in my prior opinion, I will address DePaola’s claims under RLUIPA, because
if they fail under the more rigorous RLUIPA standard, they also fail under the First
Amendment. DePaola, 2014 WL 3956108, at *3 n.7.
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shown that the current Common Fare diet substantially burdened his religious
practice. DePaola, 2014 WL 3956108, at *3-4. In his supplemental response,
DePaola asserts that the NOI diet he espouses is set forth in How to Eat to Live, an
NOI text by Elijah Muhammad. DePaola also offers some facts to support his
contention that the NOI-prohibited food items on the Common Fare menu
constitute a substantial percentage of the total calories on that menu, such that
omitting these items leaves him without sufficient nutrients.

Based on this

evidence, DePaola asserts that he has met his initial burden under RLUIPA. Even
if I so found, however, DePaola is not entitled to relief under Rule 60(b), because
he fails to present a meritorious defense to the defendants’ evidence that the current,
centralized Common Fare menu is the least restrictive means of furthering
compelling penological interests.
In my prior opinion, based on DePaola’s submissions then in the record, I
stated:
I also conclude that the defendants’ evidence supports a finding
that the common fare program as currently operated furthers
compelling state interests by the least restrictive means and thus
defeats the second element of DePaola’s RLUIPA challenge regarding
his religious diet. The defendants’ affidavits reflect that VDOC
administrators have undertaken substantial effort to design and
implement a single, centralized common fare program that is certified
by experts in religion and dieticians to accommodate Muslim inmates’
dietary beliefs and nutritional needs. I find it self-evident that this
centralized menu furthers legitimate and neutral VDOC interests in
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cost-efficient, uniform procedures by which to accommodate inmates’
religious dietary beliefs properly at numerous facilities in the VDOC
system.
To accommodate NOI inmates’ differing dietary beliefs, the
VDOC would either have to design multiple common fare master
menus or allow food service personnel at the institutional level to
determine substitutions of common fare’s authorized food items for
items consistent with NOI inmates’ individual religious dietary beliefs.
The defendants state that these options would be both unworkable and
prohibitively expensive. They predict from past experience, before
implementation of the common fare program, that allowing ad hoc
adjustments to the master menu at each institution would create a
potential for inconsistent interpretations and accommodations of
inmates’ religious dietary needs, as well as uncertainty that each
inmate’s personalized version of the diet provided necessary nutrients
and calories. While multiple master menus would offer consistency,
the defendants predict that formulating an alternate menu for one set
of NOI dietary beliefs would lead to requests for similar exceptions
for inmates of other NOI and Muslim sects and lead to exponential
increases in cost and operational complications. DePaola has not
offered any less burdensome alternative to the single, centralized
common fare program that would accomplish the legitimate goal of
uniform accommodation of inmates’ religious and nutritional needs.
As I have written before, “[t]he administrative decision to standardize
accommodation of inmates’ religious dietary needs throughout the
VDOC . . . is just the kind of prison policy-making determination to
which courts must defer. Lovelace v. Bassett, No. 7:07CV00506,
”
2009 WL 3157367, at *8 (W.D. Va. Sept. 29, 2009).
DePaola, 2014 WL 3956108, at *4.
In his supplemental responses (ECF Nos. 45 and 49), DePaola asserts, with
no documentary support or citation to any religious text, that all NOI inmates are
required to follow the dietary tenets of How to Eat to Live. He admits that the
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dietary practices of some NOI inmates vary, but asserts that these variations are not
required.

He also complains that the defendants failed to provide any

particularized information about the additional costs the VDOC would incur to
meet his NOI food demands. He contends, without supporting facts, that since the
VDOC menu provides these foods during the NOI month of fasting once a year, it
would not be overly burdensome to do so in the everyday menus as well.
DePaola’s arguments are not sufficient grounds on which to alter my
conclusion that the VDOC has compelling interests in achieving proper, costefficient accommodation of the religious dietary beliefs of the many different sects
of Islamic inmates confined in VDOC prisons, as well as ensuring that their
nutritional needs are met. DePaola’s arguments also fail to contravene the finding
that the current, centralized Common Fare menu, based on information from
Islamic experts and nutrition professionals, effectively furthers the VDOC’s
compelling interests.

He simply offers no feasible alternative to the current

system. Clearly, it would not be logical or cost effective to mount changes to the
master Common Fare menu, based on one NOI inmate’s word alone, as DePaola
demands. Moreover, making any individualized changes to the menu— changing
by
the master menu or allowing substitutions at the institution—
would open the door to
requests for similar, individualized adjustments to Common Fare meals from
multiple other sects, causing exponential cost increases and other problems that the
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current menu was designed to minimize. In short, I find no reason, based on
DePaola’s submissions, on which to grant him relief from my ruling under RLUIPA
that the Common Fare program as it stands is the least restrictive means for the
VDOC to further its compelling interests in cost efficient accommodation of
inmates’ religious dietary practices. Accordingly, I will deny his motion.
IV.
For the reasons stated, it is ORDERED that DePaola’s motion under Rule
60(b) (ECF No. 45) is DENIED.
ENTER: June 17, 2015
/s/ James P. Jones
United States District Judge

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