Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections & Public Safety

Case Description

Congress has enacted two “sister” statutes to protect religious exercise: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 1993 (RFRA), 42 U.S.C. 2000bb et seq., and the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA), 42 U.S.C. 2000cc et seq. RLUIPA, which also protects religious land uses from discrimination through zoning restrictions, offers protection for the religious rights of prisoners. In Tanzin v. Tanvir, 592 U.S. 43 (2020), the U.S. Supreme Court held that an individual may sue a government official in his individual capacity for damages for violations of RFRA. RLUIPA’s relevant language is identical, but, so far, it has not been interpreted to provide money damages against government officials.

Damon Landor is a Rastafarian. Dreadlocks hold a spiritual and cultural significance for adherents to the religion. He was incarcerated in 2020. At first, officials respected Landor’s religious practice of having long dreadlocks, but when he arrived at a correctional facility to finish the final weeks of his five-month sentence, the warden at the correctional facility ordered guards to cut his hair, which had not been cut in almost 20 years. State prison guards handcuffed him and forcibly held down while officers shaved his dreadlocks without justification—and after “tossing in the trash a copy of a federal court decision that Landor gave them upholding Rastafarian prisoners’ right to wear dreadlocks.”

After being released from prison, Landor sued for damages under RLUIPA. Lower courts dismissed his case. He then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which condemned the guards’ act but followed circuit precedent in ruling that damages from government officials in their individual capacities are not available under RLUIPA.

Landor asked the Fifth Circuit to review his case en banc, which was denied, but 15 of the 17 active judges (in concurrences and dissents) noted that Tanzin had or might have undercut the circuit precedent and that the Supreme Court should address the question.

Landor then asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the case. The Center filed an amicus brief supporting Landor’s claim that RLUIPA authorizes such damage suits. On June 23, 2025, the Supreme Court agreed to hear Landor’s appeal and consider whether an inmate can sue a government official in his individual capacity—meaning the official is personally liable—for violations of RLUIPA.

On September 3, 3025, the Center filed an amicus brief at the merits stage. A powerfully diverse group joined the Center on the brief, all united behind the reasoning that RILUPA was passed for cases just like this. Without imposing liability on prison officials for egregious violations of this nature, religious freedom in our nation’s prison system is not secure for any faith. Not since the 1990s has CLS’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom united diverse organizations including the ACLU, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Religious Freedom Institute, the Coalition of Virtue, Prison Fellowship, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Center for Public Justice, and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.

On June 23, 2026, the Supreme Court ended Landor’s bid to hold Louisiana prison guards responsible for violating his religious rights when they forcibly shaved off his dreadlocks. The 6-3 majority held that RLUIPA, as an exercise of the Spending Power, could constitutionally provide a cause of action against a state prison, but not state prison guards in their individual capacity. The state, by receiving federal funds, consents to liability; the guards do not. RLUIPA, which prohibits state and local governments that receive federal funding from regulating land and institutions in a way that discriminates based on religion, doesn’t authorize lawsuits against government officials in their personal capacities unless they “voluntarily and knowingly consented” to be held liable under the law, unlike its “twin” statute, RFRA, that prohibits religious discrimination on the federal level, Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.

Justice Jackson, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan filed a dissenting opinion, writing that the majority’s decision “magically transforms a federal statute [RLUIPA] into an invitation to be accepted or declined, deemed binding only if each particular defendant has explicitly agreed to be penalized.” “The majority’s analysis is spellbindingly straightforward: spending clause statutes are contracts, and contracts bind only those who consent,” Justice Jackson said. “But pulling this rabbit out of the hat requires misconstruing the spending clause and the necessary and proper clause, and ignoring decades of precedent affirming Congress’s authority to use the power of the purse to govern.” “In the end,” she adds, “the court reduces some of Congress’s greatest legislative achievements — federal laws that secure civil rights, environmental stability, healthcare, and more — to nothing more than the wheelings-and-dealings of an especially wealthy private party.”

While no cause of action against the guards in their individual capacity exists, Justice Gorsuch did say that Landor might be able to bring federal claims against the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety as the employer of the guards or bring state claims against the individual guards themselves.