WASHINGTON (CN) - Damon Landor's decadeslong vow against cutting his hair was upended by a short stint in a Louisiana prison in 2020. Next week the Supreme Court will decide if he can do anything about it.  

Under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, Rastafarians like Landor who maintain dreadlocks as a demonstration of their religious beliefs are exempt from prison hair standards. But two officials at Louisiana's Raymond Laborde Correction Center shaved Landor's knee-length dreadlocks anyway.  

Two lower courts dismissed Landor's lawsuit against Louisiana corrections officials, concluding that his claims were moot because he was no longer in prison. Landor wants the Supreme Court to provide a path for accountability that allows him to pursue damages for the violation of his religious rights.  

"Without damages, [the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act] would provide no deterrent," Landor's attorneys told the justices. "Officers could do the same thing tomorrow and their new victims would obtain no relief."  

Landor said if prison officials can get away with violating a Rastafarian's beliefs, other religions are next.  

"State officers could throw Holt v. Hobbs into the trash and shave an inmate's beard," his attorneys wrote. "They could deny kosher meals to Jewish inmates for failing to be orthodox, force Muslim inmates to choose between observing a halal diet or suffering malnutrition, or entirely block access to Christian communion and church services."  

Tit for tat

Back in 1990, the Supreme Court kicked off a tug-of-war with Congress over protections for religious rights with Employment Division v. Smith, which held that individuals' religious beliefs do not exempt them from compliance with laws of general applicability.

In the 6-3 ruling, the late Justice Antonin Scalia said Oregon could deny unemployment benefits to two counselors at a drug rehabilitation organization for ingesting peyote as part of a Native American Church ceremony.  

In response to Smith, Congress enacted the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, or RFRA, barring the government from burdening an individual's religious practice.  

Then in 1997, the Supreme Court limited the RFRA in City of Boerne v. Flores. Writing for the 6-3 court, Justice Anthony Kennedy said RFRA could only be applied to the federal government, not the states.  

Again, Congress countered the high court's ruling, enacting the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA, in 2000. The RLUIPA extended RFRA protections to state programs or activities that receive federal funds.  

Rectifying rights

For the first four months of Landor's five-month prison sentence in fall 2020, administrators at two facilities allowed him to keep his dreadlocks.  

When he was transferred to Raymond Laborde, Landor gave the intake guard documentation of his religious accommodations, including a Fifth Circuit opinion holding that Louisiana's policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarians violated RLUIPA.  

The guard discarded the documents, according to Landor, and the prison warden refused to give him time to obtain additional documentation from his sentencing judge. Prison officials handcuffed Landor to a chair, held him down and shaved his head. He was kept in lockdown for the last three weeks of his sentence.  

At nearly the same time in Washington, D.C., the Supreme Court was deciding whether three Muslim men could seek damages from FBI agents who put them on the no-fly list for refusing to become informants on fellow Muslims.  

On December 10, 2020, the justices issued a unanimous opinion in Tanzin v. Tanvir, holding that the RFRA permitted monetary damages against federal officials in their individual capacities.  

Landor argued that Tanzin should apply to his lawsuit against state prison officials in Louisiana.  

"This court interprets RFRA and RLUIPA together - and RLUIPA's remedies are copied verbatim from RFRA - so RLUIPA must provide the same remedies," Landor's attorneys wrote.  

Sisters but not twins  

To get around the Supreme Court's ruling in Flores, Congress bound RLUIPA protections to state programs that receive federal funds. Louisiana corrections officials say that deviation makes damages under RLUIPA unconstitutional.  

So-called spending clause statutes like RLUIPA create a contract between the federal government and the recipient of funds. State prisons entered this kind of agreement by accepting federal Medicaid funds on the condition that they abide by RLUIPA and similar laws.   

The corrections officers say they're a nonparty to that contract.  

"Nonofficials are not parties to the spending contract because they are not recipients of federal funding," the prison guards wrote. "If Congress nonetheless could impose conditions on nonrecipient nonofficials, then this court's spending clause cases - which are concerned with whether 'a grant recipient' may be held liable for 'violat[ing] the terms of spending power legislation' - would make little sense."  

Louisiana prison guards claimed that greenlighting lawsuits like Landor's would call into question the constitutionality of RLUIPA. If a state can only avoid damages for officers under RLUIPA by withdrawing from Medicaid, the officials said that would exceed Congress' spending power.  

The prison guards cited the Supreme Court's 2012 ruling in NFIB v. Sebelius on the Affordable Care Act.  

"If the only way for the states to say no to RLUIPA is to withdraw from Medicaid, that 'is a gun to the head' and this is NFIB all over again," the prison guards wrote. "Even '[t]he threatened loss of over 10% of a state's overall budget,' the court recognized, 'is economic dragooning that leaves the states with no real option but to acquiesce in' Congress' preferred policy."  

A window, not a door 

Religious and civil rights groups joined Landor to refute the prison guards' constitutional claims, noting that limits and safeguards built into RLUIPA prevent the abuse of individual capacity suits.  

"As a result, prisoners will only be able to secure damages against individual officers in clearcut circumstances - like those underlying the present case - where a prisoner's sincere religious belief is substantially and unjustifiably burdened," the groups wrote.  

The National Police Accountability Project added that most RLUIPA claims are from pro se prisoners who face numerous barriers, including obtaining expert testimony. The group said it's often impossible for inmates to obtain court orders to stop a violation of their rights and urged the justices not to foreclose their remaining options.  

"For prisoners who, for numerous reasons, cannot obtain injunctive relief, money damages are the only possible way to acknowledge and redress those extremely serious harms," the group wrote.  

The civil rights groups said prison officials have been on notice for lawsuits under RFRA violations of inmates' religious and other constitutional rights.  

"Officers who know they may be liable for damages if they violate the First Amendment can hardly claim unfair surprise upon learning that they may incur the same penalty for the same conduct under RLUIPA," the religious and civil rights groups wrote. "Surely, prison officials do not calibrate their conduct so as to violate RLUIPA while steering just clear of the First Amendment."  

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Monday. 

Source: Courthouse News Service