Rastafarian asks Supreme Court to let him sue prison guards for shaving off his dreadlocks
Religious groups argue that a law protecting prisoners' religious rights is insufficient without the right to sue. The state says that would make it even harder to staff prisons.
WASHINGTON − Damon Landor was prepared to protect the dreadlocks he had been growing for nearly two decades, in adherence to his Rastafarian beliefs, when serving a prison sentence in Louisiana for drug possession in 2020.
Landor carried a copy of a court ruling that dreadlocks grown for religious reasons should be accommodated, but an intake guard threw it in the trash and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while his knee-length locks were shaved off.
“My locks are a part of me and part of who I am,” Landor said in a statement to Paste BN, recalling how he counted on his religion to help him survive incarceration. “So when they cut off my hair, they cut off my crown.”
Now the Supreme Court may take up the question of whether Landor and other inmates can sue individual prison officials for violating a 2000 law that protects the religious rights of prisoners.
The state condemns what happened to Landor “in the strongest possible terms,” officials wrote in a filing that emphasized that the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety has amended its grooming policy to prevent a repeat of Landor's ordeal.
More: State prison warden banned braids, cornrows and dreadlocks. A Black inmate is now suing.
But Louisiana contends that the federal law doesn’t allow Landor to hold correction officials personally liable for having his dreadlocks cut off. Otherwise, the state’s attorneys wrote, there would be “numerous unintended consequences,” including making it even more difficult to staff jails and prisons.
Who should pay when religious rights are violated?
Landor, whose appeal is backed by more than 30 faith organizations, argues that monetary damages are often the only way to hold prison officials accountable when religious rights are violated.
“It is often damages or nothing,” his lawyers told the Supreme Court in asking for intervention.
Many inmates who try to defend their rights are released or transferred by the time their claim is heard – when it’s then dismissed as no longer relevant, according to religious groups that filed briefs supporting Landor.
“Unburdened by the threat of damages, prisons have little incentive to improve their policies and protect prisoners from future abuse,” lawyers for groups representing Christians, Muslims, Jews and Sikhs told the Supreme Court.
Landor is supposed to be protected by the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed unanimously by Congress in 2000 to prevent state and local prisons from placing arbitrary or unnecessary restrictions on religious practices.
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Twenty years after enactment, the Department of Justice said in a 2020 report, some institutions continue to impose substantial burdens without showing they’re necessary.
Since the law was passed, the government has conducted dozens of investigations and either brought or supported lawsuits against jails and prisons.
Most claims are raised by people practicing a religion other than Christianity, including Jews, Muslims, Sikhs and Native Americans.
Nearly 30% of cases alleging violations in the first five years after the law took effect were brought by Muslims, according to the Tayba Foundation, which supports incarcerated Muslims.
“In state prisons around the country, Muslims are targeted and deprived of basic accommodations for their faith – such as timely meals before and after religious fasts and the ability to pray without interference,” the group told the Supreme Court.
In 2020, the high court ruled that Muslim men who claimed their religious rights were violated for being placed on the government’s no-fly list after refusing to serve as FBI informants could sue the FBI agents for damages.
That case involved a different, though similar, federal law protecting religious expression.
Appeals court judges who were sympathetic to Landor’s situation said it’s not their role to say whether the Supreme Court’s 2020 ruling about federal officials should apply to state prison workers.
The Supreme Court could decide in the coming weeks whether to review a lower court's ruling that sided with Louisiana in rejecting Landor's claim for damages.
Shaved dreadlocks 'not exceedingly important'
“Landor clearly suffered a grave legal wrong,” wrote Judge Edith Brown Clement in an opinion joined by eight other judges on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. “The question is whether a damages remedy is available to him under RLUIPA. That is a question only the Supreme Court can answer.”
Louisiana officials told the court the issue is “not exceedingly important.” Congress has had ample time to amend the law to specifically allow damages if lawmakers thought that was necessary, the state argues.
And if damages are allowed, they continue, the state's “crushing workforce problem” would be overwhelmingly exacerbated.
“That, in turn, inevitably would lead to worse prison conditions and perhaps lessened protections for religious liberty, as understaffed prisons attempt to survive the growing prison populations,” Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth Murrill wrote in the state’s response to Landor’s appeal. “No one wins in that situation.”
Landor’s attorneys told the court that unless they step in, Louisiana’s stated commitment to preventing a reoccurrence of what happened to Landor will be an empty promise.
“Without damages,” they wrote, “respondents could flout their new policy, shave another man bald − stripping him of the fruits of decades of religious practice and a defining part of his identity − and still the victim could not obtain any effective relief.”