The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that prison officials erred because they “did not treat atheism as a ‘religion.’” “Atheism,” said the court, “is [the inmate’s] religion, and the group that he wanted to start was religious in nature even though it expressly rejects a belief in a supreme being.”

The Supreme Court has said that a religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being. In the 1961 case of Torcaso v. Watkins, the Court described “secular humanism” as a religion.