Allison

I. BACKGROUND

8 A. Summary of Plaintiff’s Claims 9 Plaintiff alleges as follows in his complaint. Plaintiff is a practicing Messianic Jew.1 10 Since 2010, Plaintiff has been studying and practicing Judaism as his personal religious belief. 11 As part of his beliefs, he concluded that he and his then fiancée, Heather Tower,2 were required 12 to be united in holy matrimony and they shall become one. 13 In early 2020, Plaintiff filed his first grievance against Kern Valley State Prison 14 employees for refusing to provide marriage forms. It took four months and a grievance for 15 Plaintiff to receive his requested marriage forms. After filling out the marriage forms, attaching the required birth certificates of Plaintiff and his fiancée, and sending the necessary funds to prison officials, neither Plaintiff nor his fiancée were contacted on the status of their marriage request. After more than three months with no answer, in around July of 2020, Plaintiff filed another grievance, in which he contended prison officials intentionally forestalled, and thus refused, to grant authorization to marry. This denied Plaintiff the ability to practice his…