There are a limited number of arenas in which people can claim that they have been unfairly deprived of a vegan diet. These, of course, all involve situations in which people do not, for whatever reason, have access to alternative foods and must eat what they are given. Lawyers should keep their eyes open for these situations, and look into whether the unfairness extends to illegality, perhaps even at a constitutional level.
One arena for such claims is, of course, prisons. Another is, possibly, schools. A third possibility presented itself with this story from England, in which an elderly, incapacitated woman was involuntarily deprived of her lifelong vegetarianism by an unfeeling hospital.
Whether a person’s beliefs regarding ethical veganism will ever be held to be entitled to protection, as the equivalent of a religious belief, under the 1st Amendment or civil rights statutes is still largely an open question. A California appeals court said that ethical veganism, even if based on sincere and deeply held beliefs, wasn’t the equivalent of a religion under the federal regulation at issue in Friedman v Southern California Permanente Medical Group, 102 Cal. App. 4th 39 (2002), at least when it wasn’t connected to a traditional religious belief. But that case is hardly the end of the road on this issue. (And it will come as no surprise that I think it was wrongly decided.)
As vegans grow more numerous, and some grow older, this is an important area for lawyers to pay attention to. Hospitals and nursing homes (especially if they receive government funding!) should be obligated to feed people a diet that comports with their ethics, regardless of whether their ethics are rooted in what most people think of as “religion.” For so many people, veganism is not just a lifestyle, or the expression of an ethical belief, it is fundamentally central to their world view and at the very core of their being. They should have a right to have it respected.