by David J. Meister
Damon Landor is a practitioner of the Rastafarian religion and decades-long adherent to the Nazarite Vow which requires him to “let the locks of his head grow.” Holy Bible, Numbers 6:5 (King James Version).
In 2020, Landor was incarcerated for a felony in the State of Louisiana. After spending several months housed at two prison facilities where officials permitted Landor’s knee-length hair without incident, Landor was transferred to a third facility where guards insisted on enforcing its grooming policy.
Anticipating this problem, Landor presented them with a copy of Ware v. LDOC, 866 F.3d 263 (5th Cir. 2017), in which the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals held that requiring a Rastafarian inmate to cut his hair might violate Federal law.
Prison guards responded by throwing the case in the trash, restraining Landor in a chair with handcuffs, and forcibly shaving his head.
Landor subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Louisiana Department of Corrections (LDOC) and the guards in their official as well as personal capacities, claiming that, among other theories, Landor’s rights were violated under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. 42 U.S.C §2000cc, et seq. The RLUIPA provides in part that “[a] person” who suffers a violation of the statute may “assert” the violation “as a claim or defense in a judicial proceeding and obtain appropriate relief against the government.” §§2000cc-2(a), 1(c). The “government” in this instance includes an “official” of the relevant State and any “other person acting under color of State law.” Id.
Unfortunately, Landor already had one hand tied behind his back by the Supreme Court when it previously decided that the RLUIPA, despite its plain language, does not provide a cause of action for money damages against State agencies like LDOC. Sossamon v. Texas, 536 U.S. 277 (2011) (discussing Sovereign Immunity).
Injunctive relief remained available against LDOC and defendants’ official capacities to correct grooming policy, but those claims were mooted when Landor was released from prison and LDOC lost custody. What remained was his claim for money damages against the personal capacity of defendant guards who cut his hair.
It’s not a question that the guards violated Landor’s religious rights—they did. The question was whether Landor had a remedy in law to address the wrong.
On June 23, 2026, the Supreme Court held that Landor does not, neatly tying Landor’s remaining hand behind his back before kicking his case out of court. See Landor v. La. Dep’t of Corr. & Pub. Safety, 2026 U.S. LEXIS 2717.
The Landor decision illustrates a long-running contention between Congress (who would expand religious freedoms) and the Supreme Court (who would narrow them).
In one of a retinue of earlier cases applying similar logic, the Court created an abridgment to Constitutional protections when it held prison officials may infringe upon prisoners’ First Amendment rights, provided there’s a rational and neutral reason for the regulation. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 89 (1987).
Under this standard, it does not matter “whether the policy in fact advances the [government’s] legitimate interest.” Courts must afford due deference by considering only whether prison officials “might reasonably have thought that the policy would advance [the prison’s] interest.” Mauro v. Arpaio, 188 F.3d 1054, 1060 (9th Cir. 1999) (en banc).
Applying this highly deferential standard, for example, and in the lower levels of the instant case, the District Court dismissed Landor’s First Amendment claim on the basis that LDOC offered a rational interest in its grooming policy requiring Rastafarian inmates to cut their hair. Landor v. La. Dep’t of Corr. & Pub. Safety, 2022 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 176894, at *3-4 (M.D. La. Sept. 29, 2022).
The District Court relied on Scott v. Miss. Dep’t of Corr., 961 F.2d 77, 80 (5th Cir. 1992), which held that officials have a legitimate interest in imposing short hair to more easily identify inmates because longer hair can be styled to alter an inmate’s appearance. In the face of this rational policy, it makes no difference that longer hair styles have not in fact impeded legitimate penological objectives in identifying inmates.
In a seminal case defending this type of declension in religious protections, the Supreme Court held that the First Amendment does not carve out religious exemptions from neutral and generally applicable laws even when the laws are unsupported by a narrowly tailored, compelling governmental interest, and invited Congress to legislate greater protections if it chooses to. Employment Div., Dep’t of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 878-882 (1990).
In response, Congress sought to expand religious protection by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which forbade States and the Federal Government alike from substantially burdening religious exercise without compelling interest while using least restrictive methods. 42 U.S.C. §2000bb, et seq.
The Supreme Court upheld the RFRA as applied to the Federal Government but struck it down as applied to the States as exceeding Congress’s power under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment. City of Boerne v. Flores, 521 U.S. 507 (1997).
Congress came back with RLUIPA, using statutory language identical to RFRA, but pinning its authority to the Spending Clause of the U.S. Constitution. Art. I, §8, cl. 1. Since all 50 States receive Federal money, the Supreme Court upheld RLUIPA’s expanded religious protections as applied to the States under the Spending Clause. Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U.S. 709 (2005).
In 2020, the Supreme Court determined the “appropriate relief” provision of the RFRA included money damages against government officials in their personal capacities. Tanzin v. Tanvir, 592 U.S. 53 (2020). The identical phrase in RLUIPA presumptively would as well, but the Supreme Court pumped the brakes.
Rather, the Supreme Court disregarded the necessary corollary and conjured a new principle while distinguishing the RFRA from the RLUIPA: “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.” Landor, 2026 U.S. LEXIS 2717, at *38 (Jackson, J., dissenting).
In coming to that conclusion, the Court glossed over myriad laws imposed on the States via Spending Clause powers such as the Clean Air Act that creates liability for individual officials who pollute the air. Id. at *56-57.
In those circumstances, agents of the State voluntarily seek its employment and wield its power, and therefore submit themselves to sanction when they misuse that position. The contrary Landor decision denigrates that rule, and, further, casts a shadow on its precedents.
The ball is officially back in Congress’s court, should it choose to swing at it and enact the protections it originally envisioned. Id. at *38, n.5.
In the meantime, the First Amendment may provide relief in theory, but in practice it offers virtually no protection to religious expression behind bars. And as things stand under RLUIPA, “appropriate relief” from government trespass on religious freedoms may mean no relief at all.