Legal pressure for jail baptisms

According to a Liberty Counsel press release, the Curry County Detention Center (New Mexico) will now allow a local ministry to baptise six inmates in a portable pool:

The prison ministry of the Sixteenth & Pile Church of Christ contacted Liberty Counsel for assistance after Warden Leslie Johnson and county officials refused to permit baptism by immersion at the local detention center. The ministry offered to provide a mobile baptismal tank in a secure area of the facility and to pay any additional security costs. Ministry leaders also advised the warden that a prison ministry in neighboring Portales, New Mexico, had utilized a similar procedure without incident.

Liberty Counsel sent a demand letter to the warden and the county explaining that failure to allow the baptisms violated the inmates' constitutional right to free exercise of religion and also violated the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000. The county continued to emphatically refuse to allow the baptisms, until the prison ministry warned the warden that it was serious about pursuing the matter further and advised the county that a federal lawsuit by Liberty Counsel was unavoidable.

H/T to Religion Clause