A federal judge agreed on Thursday that a jury would decide whether a corrections officer violated the constitutional rights of an incarcerated Muslim man by requiring him to shave his beard upon intake.

Tajuddin Ashaheed entered the Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center in July 2016 to serve a short sentence for a parole violation. As a Muslim, he maintained a beard as part of his religious beliefs and the facility exempted such detainees from shaving. Nonetheless, Derrick Porcher allegedly told Ashaheed he had to shave his beard upon intake.

“That’s not a Muslim beard,” Porcher allegedly said. “That’s not how Muslims grow their beard.”

After Ashaheed protested, Porcher allegedly threatened to put him in “the hole,” meaning administrative segregation. Ashaheed then acquiesced and received a shave.

In a July 17 order, U.S. District Court Senior Judge William J. Martínez rejected Porcher’s motion to end the case in his favor without a trial. A jury would decide whether Porcher violated Ashaheed’s First Amendment right to the free exercise of his religion.

In doing so, Martínez noted an unusual feature to the case: The Denver-based federal appeals court had already decided Ashaheed’s allegations, if true, amounted to a clear constitutional violation.

Due to a misunderstanding about the identity of the corrections employee who told Ashaheed to shave, he originally sued Sgt. Thomas E. Currington. Earlier in the case, Martínez granted Currington qualified immunity, meaning he was not on notice that his actions would be violating Ashaheed’s clear constitutional rights.

But in 2021, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit reinstated the lawsuit.

“When Sergeant Currington ignored the Center’s religious exemption and forced Mr. Ashaheed to shave his beard, he violated clearly established law,” wrote Judge Scott M. Matheson Jr. at the time.

With the lawsuit back before Martínez, and with Porcher substituted as the correct defendant, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office moved to end the case in Porcher’s favor, calling the alleged constitutional violation a “single, isolated incident” in which Porcher was negligent at most.

“Ashaheed has not put forward any evidence that Porcher acted because Ashaheed is Muslim,” the office wrote. “Instead, Ashaheed’s version of events indicate that Porcher did not believe Ashaheed qualified for the exception to the beard-shaving policy and, but for Porcher’s misunderstanding, Porcher would have permitted Ashaheed to keep his beard. This single mistake, without more, cannot provide the basis for a finding of a constitutional violation.”

The 10th Circuit has already said otherwise, countered Ashaheed, based on allegations that substantially mirrored the eventual evidence.

“Defendant Porcher was not making a mistake but was rather acting with intentional discrimination by imposing his own judgment on whether Mr. Ashaheed appeared ‘Muslim enough’ to qualify for the religious exception to the shaving requirement,” wrote his attorneys.

Martínez agreed with Ashaheed.

“In other words, the Court is not free to disregard the binding and emphatic analysis of the Tenth Circuit,” he wrote. The circuit “already concluded that Porcher’s conduct — albeit based on only one incident — amounted to intentional discrimination and religious animus, not mere mistake or negligence.”

The case is Ashaheed v. Porcher.