Supreme Court Bars Lawsuit After Prison Guards Shaved Inmate’s Dreadlocks
The Supreme Court stated on Tuesday {that a} Rastafarian whose dreadlocks had been forcibly shaved by jail guards couldn’t sue state officers for cash.
In a 6-to-3 vote dividing the court docket alongside ideological strains, the bulk stated federal regulation didn’t enable the prisoner, Damon Landor, to sue particular person officers of their non-public capability for violating his non secular beliefs.
Justice Neil M. Gorsuch wrote the bulk opinion. The three liberal justices dissented.
The resolution was a departure from a collection of Supreme Court rulings in recent times which have repeatedly bolstered non secular rights. In 2022, the court docket sided with a Texas demise row inmate who wished his pastor to the touch him and pray aloud on the time of his execution. That identical 12 months, the court docket instructed a highschool soccer coach had a constitutional proper to wish on the 50-yard line after his workforce’s video games.
The Trump administration and attorneys for the previous inmate, Mr. Landor, had urged the Supreme Court to permit his lawsuit to proceed.
When Mr. Landor reported for a five-month sentence for drug possession in Louisiana, he had not lower his hair for nearly twenty years, consistent with his religion. His dreadlocks fell practically to his knees.
Four months into his time period, in 2020, he was transferred to a brand new jail. He carried with him a replica of a 2017 authorized opinion that held that inmates have to be allowed to maintain their dreadlocks below a federal regulation defending prisoners’ non secular freedom.
When he pulled out a replica of that call, a guard threw it within the trash, based on court docket paperwork he filed in a later lawsuit.
Two guards then handcuffed Mr. Landor to a chair and forcibly shaved him bald.
He sued the warden and the guards below the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Acta federal regulation that requires states to guard the non secular rights of people in state establishments.
In a separate case, the Supreme Court dominated in 2020 {that a} associated statute from 1993 — the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — permitted people to sue to “obtain money damages against federal officials in their individual capacities.”
The query for the justices was whether or not the language within the two statutes needs to be learn the identical strategy to enable folks to get cash as acceptable aid from the federal government when their rights have been violated.
The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the identical court docket that had dominated that the regulation protected Rastafarian prisoners’ dreadlocks, stated it “emphatically” condemned Mr. Landor’s remedy. But the judges stated they had been certain by previous precedent that didn’t enable such litigation in opposition to state officers. The statute Mr. Landor relied on was meaningfully totally different, the panel wrote, and didn’t authorize his go well with.
The full Fifth Circuit declined to rehear the case, however 9 judges requested the Supreme Court to offer route to the decrease courts.
