The American Civil Liberties Union has filed a federal discrimination lawsuit against the Delaware Board of Funeral Services, claiming that it denied a Muslim religious leader access to “essential” end-of-life paperwork.According to Delaware Public Radio, the complaint claims that the Board of Funeral Services has repeatedly refused to grant the plaintiff access to the digital DelVERS portal to download death certificates and file body transfer requests.The plaintiff, who is an imam at a Delaware mosque, says that the state will not authorize his DelVERS registration because he is not a licensed funeral director. And, under state law, any individual seeking to obtain such licensure must complete at least 25 embalmings.However, attorneys for the ACLU now argue that Delaware’s requirements are exclusionary, in that most Muslims consider embalming a prohibited form of corpse desecration. In other words, an imam adhering to common Islamic conventions would necessarily be precluded from ever being able to meet the state’s licensing standards.Dwayne Bensing, an ACLU of Delaware attorney litigating the case, said that Muslim religious leaders like his client are thereby forced to make a difficult decision: abrogate their own deeply-held beliefs, or pay “exorbitant” sums of money to let a licensed funeral director complete the paperwork.

Gavel on copy of lawsuit; image by Wirestock, via Freepik.com.

“Delaware presents people from the Muslim faith an untenable choice: violate their religious beliefs or not practice their religious funeral traditions at all,” Bensing said in a statement. “The Constitution protects everyone’s right to practice their religion free from discrimination, yet Delaware’s law directly prevents Muslims, Orthodox Jews, and others who do not practice embalming from practicing their sacred funeral services.”The ACLU’s lawsuit suggests that, in a certain sense, funeral directors hold a monopoly on licensing procedures—a monopoly that helps them limit competition and ensure that they stand to make a profit off what should be simple, routine requests for paperwork.“[…] Just the access to this certificate…. costs, like, $25,” Bensing said. “But funeral directors are charging, for the work-around, upwards of thousands of dollars.”“So they are profiting off of this exclusionary practice that the state of Delaware is signing off on because they require for funeral directors to get their licenses this embalming requirement, which is not applicable to Muslim burials,” he said. “And worse than that—it is sacrilegious to the Muslim faith.”Bensing stressed that most Muslims receive very simple burials—a cleansing of the body, followed by its covering with a shroud. In most cases, the body is then immediately interred, usually within several hours of death.“Services for Muslim funerals are incredibly simple, and do not require traditional funeral home facilities. But Muslim families are forced to pay exorbitantly for services they will not actually use,” Bensing said. “There is no public health reason to prevent Muslim families from conducting funeral services according to their faith. Instead, the denial of Muslim clerics from accessing basic forms to conduct funerals only seeks to preserve licensed funeral directors’ ability to charge unnecessary fees to these families.”The ACLU is litigating the case alongside Dover-based Billion Law.

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ACLU files religious discrimination lawsuit over Imam's access to end-of-life paperworkACLU-DE FILES FEDERAL LAWSUIT CHALLENGING RELIGIOUS DISCRIMINATION AGAINST MUSLIM FUNERAL PRACTICES.