{"id":241,"date":"2026-06-23T15:41:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-23T15:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=241"},"modified":"2026-06-23T15:41:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T15:41:13","slug":"court-rules-former-louisiana-inmate-cannot-sue-prison-officials-in-religious-dispute-over-long-hair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=241","title":{"rendered":"Court rules former Louisiana inmate cannot sue prison officials in religious dispute over long hair"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections<\/em> that a Louisiana man cannot sue prison officials who shaved his head even after he showed them a copy of a court ruling that allowed him to keep his long hair for religious reasons. By a vote of 6-3, with the prison officials that a federal law intended to protect the religious rights of prisoners does not authorize Damon Landor\u2019s lawsuit seeking damages from the officials.<\/p>\n

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Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote that under the Constitution\u2019s spending clause (pursuant to which the federal law protecting religious rights was enacted), \u201cCongress\u2019s power to spend money does not include the power to regulate. Spending Clause statutes can bind only those who voluntarily and knowingly undertake obligations by agreement with the federal government\u201d \u2013 an \u201cessential element\u201d missing from Landor\u2019s case.<\/p>\n

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented. She argued that, as a result of the majority\u2019s ruling, \u201c[p]risoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons\u2014no matter how blatant\u2014will often be left remediless. And encroachments on prisoners\u2019 statutory rights are likely to happen with fair frequency, as state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper.\u201d<\/p>\n

The haircut at the center of the dispute took place in December 2020, when Landor, with three weeks left in his sentence, was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center. Landor is a devout Rastafarian who, as part of his faith, had grown his hair for nearly 20 years without cutting it. During his time in two previous prisons, he had been allowed to keep his hair long or under a \u201crastacap.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Landor arrived at the RLCC, he told the prison guard conducting the inmate intake procedures that he was a practicing Rastafarian, and he gave the guard a copy of a ruling by a federal appeals court holding that Louisiana\u2019s policy of cutting Rastafarians\u2019 hair violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, as well as federal and state provisions regarding religious accommodations for Rastafarians. The guard took the papers from Landor, threw them in the trash, and called the warden. When the warden arrived, he ordered corrections officers to take Landor to another room, where they handcuffed him to a chair and held him down while his head was shaved bald.<\/p>\n

Landor went to federal court in Louisiana in 2021, relying on a provision of RLUIPA that allows individuals to bring lawsuits against the government and government officials for \u201cappropriate relief.\u201d But the lower courts threw out his lawsuit, that RLUIPA does not allow private individuals to bring claims for money damages.<\/p>\n

Read more Announcement of opinions for Tuesday, June 23<\/a><\/p>\n

Landor then appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed last summer to review his case. On Tuesday, the court upheld the ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in favor of the prison officials.<\/p>\n

In his 18-page opinion for the majority, Gorsuch explained that Congress enacted RLUIPA pursuant to its power under the spending clause, which gives it the power to spend money to provide for the \u201cgeneral Welfare of the United States.\u201d But although that power allows Congress to put conditions on the funds that it distributes, Gorsuch reasoned, it can only impose sanctions \u2013 other than terminating the funds \u2013 for violations of those conditions if the recipients of the funds have knowingly and voluntarily consented to those sanctions.<\/p>\n

In this case, Gorsuch continued, the Louisiana Department of Corrections \u201cdoes not dispute that it is a recipient of federal funds\u201d and \u201cthat it has agreed\u201d to be sued under RLUIPA \u201cas a condition of accepting those funds.\u201d But Landor does not contend that the prison officials who are the defendants in his lawsuit have \u201cvoluntarily and knowingly consented to answer private suits under RLUIPA,\u201d Gorsuch noted, and therefore his lawsuit against them cannot go forward.<\/p>\n

In her 29-page dissent, Jackson argued that Tuesday\u2019s decision imposed a \u201cnovel consent requirement.\u201d \u201cOn the majority\u2019s view,\u201d she wrote, \u201cno matter how clearly Congress speaks, all that matters is the response it elicits: Spending Clause legislation may not make anybody liable without their express consent. And because prison officials (as opposed to their state-prison employers) have not directly accepted federal funds, they have not consented to being sanctioned for their failure to follow federal law.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read more Texas asks court to leave in place age-verification and parental-consent law on apps<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections that a Louisiana man cannot sue prison officials who shaved his head even after he showed them a copy of a court ruling that allowed him to keep his long hair for religious reasons. By a vote of 6-3, with the prison […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":240,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-opinion-analysis"],"yoast_head":"\nCourt rules former Louisiana inmate cannot sue prison officials in religious dispute over long hair - American Service Review<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/americanservicereview.com\/?p=241\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Court rules former Louisiana inmate cannot sue prison officials in religious dispute over long hair - American Service Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled in Landor v. 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