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Supreme Court decides not everyone deserves religious liberty

Supreme Court decides not everyone deserves religious liberty

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2026/6/23/800059751/courts/supreme-court-decides-not-everyone-deserves-religious-liberty/ 

Supreme Court decides not everyone deserves religious liberty

by Lisa Needham
Staff
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The U.S. Supreme Court is seen, June 5, 2026, in Washington.
The U.S. Supreme Court is seen, June 5, in Washington.AP

The Supreme Court’s decision in Landor v. Louisiana is a perfect example of how conservatives strip rights from people by abstracting them away. The court’s conservative majority didn’t really want to talk about Damon Landor and how Louisiana corrections officials openly and flagrantly violated his religious liberty rights. 

So, they buried that simple story in a sprawling monstrosity of a discussion about the Spending Clause, the Necessary and Proper Clause, and contract law. All that verbiage, however, can’t obscure what happened here, which is that the court’s conservatives decided that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, passed by Congress to explicitly protect the religious rights of incarcerated people, doesn’t really apply to all religions.

The facts of the case are as simple as they are appalling.

Landor is a practicing Rastafari who has taken the Nazarite vow, which requires adherence to the Biblical requirements laid out in Numbers 6, particularly Numbers 6:5: “All the days of the vow of his separation no razor shall come upon his head; until the days are fulfilled for which he separated himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. Then he shall let the locks of the hair of his head grow.”

We're sure these folks wouldn't have a hard time getting a religious exemption.
We’re sure these folks wouldn’t have a hard time getting a religious exemption, for some reason.AP

In keeping with his faith, Landor had grown his hair for nearly 20 years. During two previous incarcerations, the correctional facilities followed the law and did not force him to cut his locs. 

When Landor was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Louisiana, he brought with him state and federal forms explaining the requirements for religious accommodations and a copy of a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals case that specifically held that prohibiting locs in correctional facilities violated RLUIPA.

In an almost comically blatant violation of the law, the intake officer threw Landor’s documents in the trash and summoned the warden, who demanded Landor provide religious documentation from the sentencing judge. When Landor offered to get that documentation from his former lawyer, the warden said it was “too late for that,” and Landor was forcibly shackled and shaved bald.

Here’s where the procedural trickery comes in, a way to completely deprive Landor of the ability to get justice for a profound violation of his religious beliefs.

This incident happened when Landor had only three weeks remaining in his sentence. Upon his release, he sued the warden, the state corrections secretary, and the prison guards. Both the federal district court and the Fifth Circuit ruled that Landor’s right to relief under RLUIPA was limited to injunctive relief—a decision that would bar prison officials from taking a certain action. And since Landor was now no longer incarcerated, his claim was moot. 

RLUIPA, the majority decided, doesn’t allow for a “private cause of action” for damages against individual officials, so Landor was out of luck. 

You see the problem here, of course. Injunctive relief would only have been actual relief if somehow Landor had managed to file a lawsuit in the brief time before he was shackled and forcibly shaved. Since that was impossible, Landor’s recourse was to sue the prison officials in their official capacity.

Nope, said the conservative majority. Landor could only sue officials who have voluntarily agreed to be bound by RLUIPA. You get one guess as to whether any state officials would decide to voluntarily agree to be bound by a law they clearly despise

The court’s conservatives loved this loophole, saying that RLUIPA is really more like a contract than a law, and since the prison officials didn’t agree to be bound by that contract, they couldn’t be liable.

Who knew that one could simply opt out of being bound by laws?

This case was a rare one that united people across the religious and ideological spectrum. Hyperconservative organizations like the Becket Fund, ACLJ, and the religious liberty clinic at Notre Dame, where Justice Amy Coney Barrett taught for 15 years, filed amicus briefs on Landor’s side, along with groups such as a group of Rastafari scholars and the National Police Accountability Project.

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks to the 2025 Supreme Court Fellows Program, Feb. 13, 2025, at the Library of Congress in Washington.
Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson speaks to the 2025 Supreme Court Fellows Program, Feb. 13, 2025, at the Library of Congress in Washington.AP

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent calls out the majority for its hypocrisy, a thing that is becoming a distressingly regular occurrence, by pointing out that a statute with identical language, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, allows for lawsuits seeking damages from individual government officials, a thing the Supreme Court unanimously affirmed just six years ago.

Her dissent also highlights that the majority basically gave permission to prison officials to just ignore the law: “Prisoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons—no matter how blatant—will often be left remediless. And encroachments on prisoners’ statutory rights are likely to happen with fair frequency, as state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper.”

One can presume the majority might not be so quick to throw away the rights of the religious litigants it likes—such as evangelical Christians—but making it nearly impossible for religious minorities to obtain relief is acceptable. Religious liberty for me but not for thee indeed. 

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  1. Comment by Bluster.

    Bibi’s actions have riled the entire world up against his ethnic group. The “supreme” clowns at the white supremacist high court have riled up the entire world against their once political party now organized crime group and their preferred cult of lies aka religion. The damage is deep and it will be long lasting. I hope they and their supporters enjoy the animosity that’s going to rain down on them for the foreseeable future.

  2. Comment by Carbon.

    I, for one, would advocate that ALL superstition-based Abrahamic religions be engineered OUT of society. Believing in any ancient goat gods in the 21st century should be considered a severe mental illness, and failure of the educational system.

  3. Comment by MurielVieuxThePoet.

    When you have a prison system where even those with minor offenses come out of the other end often worse than when they went in, when you refuse to address the rampant crimes not only from guards but other prisoners, yet still somehow beat your chest as a beacon of human rights... that is called hypocrisy.

    The US legal system, from arrest to jail to courts to justice is one of the most foul thing in the US.

    • Reply by Rknrobin.

      Recc'd 1000x

  4. Comment by cosliberal.

    The Roberts Court has been declaring religious liberty to mean that right wing Christians have the liberty to impose their heresy on the rest of us for years.

  5. Comment by Meteor Blades.

    Prison reformers are the loneliest activists in the world. Because all too many people think whatever happens to the incarcerated they deserve.

  6. Comment by juliabliss.

    Only 3 weeks left in his sentence? That is brutal, and very sad. The 1st amendment only applies to xtians in this country.

  7. Comment by ohdog22.

    Only real non-prejudicial reason for shaving hair on head is to avoid spread of head lice that can transmit Typhus. Anti-lice and anti-typhus medicines are widely available so this practice is strictly for humiliation and disparagement of minority cultural traditions.

    • Reply by NotSure.

      Don't forget disparagement of minorities.

  8. Comment by LeMoJoust.

    Seat-thief Gorsuch should be laughed at on the streets by second graders for writing that stupidity.

  9. Comment by Goatwoman.

    Yeahyeahyeah but he's Black. And he has hippy hair.

    Throw the book at him!

    I am so incredibly sick of these six twisted nutcases.

  10. Comment by aceoclubs.

    The reasoning was sound. He sought monetary damages after the damage was done. If he could have gotten a preliminary injunction, the head shaving could have been prevented under the First Amendment. (Now, how he could have gotten an injunction, it beats me.)

    • Reply by Pammy61.

      That is when people generally seek monetary damages, after the damage is done. That is what civil litigation is all about.

    • Reply by pythonS.

      This is the kind of case that is "incapable of review, but capable of repetition." The Supreme Court knows better than this, but the majority chose to do the wrong thing, anyway.

  11. Comment by Interplay9.

    1970’s Rastafarians: “ With our every thought we kill the Pope.”

    2026 Majority Catholic SCOTUS: “Screw you and your religion.”

    • Reply by murphy.

      I have a feeling that Pope Leo isn’t happy with this decision…. (And I KNOW that Pope Francis, watching from above, is not happy with it.) Pseudo-Catholics and Christian-ists across the board seem to be folks who never actually read anything Jesus said, let alone understood it.

  12. Comment by Dejah.

    All religions are protected.

    Some religions are protected more than others.

    Orwell was right.

  13. Comment by MamaLucia.

    This is beyond sickening. and scary as f*ck. How long before they come after the atheists and other unbelievers? (Read: anyone who isn't a White Male Conservative Christian Nationalist Scumbag.)

  14. Comment by Jarowell3801.

    Since this is such a light-hearted fun story, allow me to join in. When I was a jailer in the Denton County Jail (Tx,) I was tasked with supervising new trustees. The incentive was that an inmate served a 2 for 1 rate, as opposed to day for day in the general population. One of the stipulations for becoming a trustee was that the inmates had to cut their hair. As normal human beings, they would try to obtain the very same religious exemption mentioned in the article. Now, a procedure did exist to obtain the exemption. It had to go through the Chaplain, it involved paperwork, and had the added benefit of being a huge pain in the ass. I happen to be one of those normal human beings I mentioned, so I devised a simple test when confronted with this. It really only came up for me with the purported Rastafarians, and the Muslims. Some of the sects don't shave their beards? I forget the details. So, with the Rastafarians, I would simply asked them "Who was Haile Salassie?" If they did not know the name of Ras Tafari before he ascended to the throne to become King Of Ethiopia, I was confident they did not know ANYTHING about Rastafarianism. To tell the truth, neither did I, if pressed, it was off to the paperwork I would go, lol.

    With Muslims, I was pretty sure they wouldn't know it either, so I had to come up with a different test. I had just (re)read T.E. Lawrence's "The Seven Pillars of Wisdom." You know, the guy from "Lawrence of Arabia." The Seven Pillars are listed in the Koran, and are reported to come straight from Mohammed himself. I would simply ask the inmate to list them, which I had memorized, (for this eventuality.) Most of the time, I received blank stares, and abject surrender as they capitulated to the barber. But ONCE, I had a guy go right down the list, 1234567. I looked at him stunned. All I could think to say was "Salaam Aleichem." To which I received the inevitable reply: "Aleichem Salaam." I gestured to the housing area, he just smiled and walked through the door. He kept his beard.

    By the way, we would NEVER have forcibly shaved a guy's head. Like I said, there was a process, and we followed it. This really is a horrible time to be an American.

    • Reply by CyberMindGrrl.

      Funnily enough, Haile Salassie was completely unaware of the fact that there was an entire religion devoted to him down in Jamaica.

    • Reply by aceoclubs.

      The jailers I worked with were unique and great with people.

  15. Comment by Kansas Born.

    How long unti the "sold-out" six justices meet and decide the time is ripe to change into white robes and pointy hoods?

    • Reply by Truman535.

      You mean they don't?

    • Reply by Chartreuxe.

      They already do that.

  16. Comment by Will Stockwin.

    Another shit stain on The Constitution after being used as toilet paper again by our Extreme Court.

  17. Comment by Jay Teebee.

    Why are they like this?

    • Reply by DocG.

      Yet another infuriating anti-American decision

    • Reply by NoFreeRide.

      Because 6 of the Supremes are Catholic and 5 of them tend towards Dominionist Christianity (Alito did also), which asserts that Christianity has always been the bedrock of the country and must, eventually, completely rule the land. Most of those labeled Christian Nationalists also believe the same thing. That they would be hypocritical towards non-Christian religious freedoms is firmly embedded, and excused, in their world view.

  18. Comment by carstonio.

    It’s all about knowing your audience. Landor and his lawyers should have presented him as a business owner who believes no one should ever get a haircut, and that being expected to sell services to people with haircuts is the same as forcing him to have his own hair cut.

  19. Comment by ynohtnA.

    When we take the House we can start impeachment proceedings against the two Justices who we know have taken bribes. We won't because Democratic law makers don't and never have known how to play hardball, but we can.

    It doesn't need to make it to the Senate. It doesn't even need to make it to the House floor. Just beginning the process will stain the Supreme Joke as no Supreme Court has been. History will already speak poorly of them but beginning an impeachment investigation will ruin their reputation for all time.

    • Reply by Mercy Ormont.

      That's the same rationale that said just impeaching Trump would rein him in, even if he couldn't be convicted. Instead just the opposite happened; he took not being convicted as proof that everything he did was right. The same would happen with the individuals you have in mind.

    • Reply by NotSure.

      I'm somewhat surprised one or both of them haven't decided to retire so they can be easily replaced before the midterms. But then again, they are so full of themselves that they'll probably stay until they are dead.

    • Reply by NoFreeRide.

      It's still a long way until January 2027, when any new House or Senate would take over. Coney Barrett was nominated and seated in a month.

  20. Comment by BSpacific.

    The bigoted republican majority, including Thomas, proving that religious rights only apply to white christians.

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