US supreme court blocks Rastafarian man’s lawsuit over forced head-shaving in prison

The US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let a Rastafarian man sue ⁠state prison officials in Louisiana ⁠after guards held him ​down and shaved him bald in violation of his religious beliefs, in a landmark case.The case was brought under a federal law designed to protect incarcerated people from religious discrimination.The court, in a ⁠6-3 opinion, upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss Damon Landor’s lawsuit because it found the statute at issue did not permit him to sue the individual ⁠prison officials and guards for monetary damages. Landor’s religion requires him to let his hair grow.The court’s three liberal justices dissented ​from the opinion.The law, called the Religious Land Use ‌and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) of 2000, ‌prohibits religious discrimination by state and local governments in land-use regulations and also protects the religious rights of people confined ‌to institutions such as prisons and jails.The Trump administration backed Landor, urging the supreme court to revive the case.The court had expanded the rights of religious people and institutions in a series of opinions in recent years. It heard arguments in the case in November.Landor grew his hair over a span of 20 years into long locks that reached his knees. In 2020, near the end of ‌a five-month prison sentence for drug possession, Landor was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, Louisiana.There, Landor reminded officials that the New Orleans-based fifth US circuit court of appeals had ​ruled in a 2017 case that Louisiana’s policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarians violated the 2000 law. Landor even handed over a copy of that ruling, but a guard threw it in the trash, according to court documents in the case.Landor was then handcuffed to a chair, held down and shaved.The Rastafari religion dates back almost a century to Jamaica, with a recognition for an Ethiopian messiah and a vow that growing uncut dreadlocks is integral to the faith, in which Landor had declared himself a devout follower.“When I was strapped down and shaved, it felt like I was raped,” Landor said in a statement during the closely-watched case, as reported by ABC.Landor, who lives in Slidell, Louisiana sued, but a federal judge threw out his case. ⁠In 2023, the appeals court upheld that decision, concluding that the law at issue ​does not allow individual officials to be ​personally held liable for money damages.Without a damages ​remedy, the law would provide no deterrent against abuse by officials, Landor’s lawyers told the ​supreme court.Landor’s lawyers have called ‌the statute similar to ​a 1993 law called the ​Religious Freedom Restoration Act that prohibits religious infringement by the federal government.In 2020, the supreme court allowed for monetary damages claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in a case involving a bid by three Muslim Americans to sue FBI agents whom they accused of placing the men on the government’s anti-terrorism “no-fly list” for refusing to become informants.The opinion was delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch, with the chief justice, John Roberts, as well as justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett concurring. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.Landor “does not have a federal RLUIPA cause of action against the officers. Under the Spending Clause, Congress lacks regulatory authority to impose liability on them directly and must depend instead on consent. And because they never agreed to answer suits like this one, Mr Landor’s case cannot proceed against them any more than a breach of contract action might proceed against a defendant who never formed a contract,” Gorsuch wrote.Jackson filed the dissenting opinion, which was joined by fellow liberal justices.She wrote that prisoners “like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons – no matter how blatant – will often be left remediless. And encroachments on prisoners’ 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.”Reuters contributed reporting