Nevada Inmate Wins Right to Kosher Food
The Nevada Department of Corrections, responding to an inmate’s lawsuit, agreed to provide Orthodox Jewish inmates with kosher-certified meals.
Corrections department officials said this week that the department would obtain rabbinic kosher certification of food prepared for those who joined the lawsuit filed by Howard Ackerman “and demonstrate an ability to maintain such certification,” the Los Vegas Review-Journal reported. A hearing on the lawsuit had been set for April 18.
Ackerman’s lawsuit filed in January claimied the newly instituted “common fare” menu was not kosher and thus violated his First Amendment right of religious freedom.
An injunction ordered by a federal judge in Nevada prevented the department from serving the new menu to Ackerman and included the nearly 300 other inmates who were receiving a kosher diet in the injunction.
Ackerman, 51, is an Orthodox Jew who is serving a life sentence for kidnapping.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
