--Pratt ruled that the Iowa Department of Corrections must close the program within 60 days and that $1.5 million in contract payments
What is a prison fellowship doing taking money for things others do for free?
The federal courts have ruled that chaplains are a legitimate function of the US government in order to preserve the right of religion, so they are employed in various institutional settings at government expense, to include the military, the Veteran's administration, and in the House/Senate. (Perhaps others...prisons, for example.)
The reason is this: the government has placed people in these institutions, and the nature of the institution itself separate the "members" from regular society in some extraordinary way. Additionally, the controls necessary in the institutional setting require the goverment to have control of persons who regularly interact with the "members."
This is clearly the case with the military, and it is about the military that the federal courts ruled years ago. They decided that the chaplaincy was the "best" solution to the problem of providing the FULL free exercise rights to the members of the military.
As a military chaplain, we regularly spent tax monies for an assortment of soldier support programs.
All legal....and necessary.
I see the same issue in prisons: a) an institutionalized membership, b) extraordianary separation from normal society, c) necessity of institutional control of access to membership.