The United States Supreme Court's conservative majority appears inclined to reject a Rastafarian man's bid to sue state prison officials in Louisiana after guards shaved him bald in violation of his religious beliefs.
The case has been brought under a federal law protecting incarcerated people from religious discrimination.
The justices heard arguments in an appeal by Damon Landor, whose religion requires him to let his hair grow, of a lower court's decision to throw out his lawsuit because it found the statute at issue did not allow him to sue individual officials for monetary damages.
The law, called the Religious Land Use and Institutionalised Persons Act of 2000, or RLUIPA, prohibits religious discrimination by state and local governments in land-use regulations and also protects the religious rights of people confined to institutions such as prisons and jails.
The Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has expanded the rights of religious people and institutions in a series of rulings in recent years.
But the conservative justices seemed on Monday to favour a view that because the law at issue implicates the power of Congress under the Constitution's so-called Spending Clause, the measure may impose conditions only on the state or government entity that is the actual recipient of federal funds, not individual employees who do not themselves receive the funds.
"They didn't have a direct relationship with the federal government. They didn't get directly any federal financial assistance. So you don't have the same basis for liability as we do in the other typical Spending Clause case, right?" conservative Chief Justice John Roberts asked Landor's lawyer, Zachary Tripp.
Tripp said the jobs of the people who his client sued were necessarily subject to the conditions in the law Congress passed.
Conservative Justice Neil Gorsuch expressed doubt that the law gives state officers sufficient notice that they could be held individually liable for violations.
"Where did the individual defendants agree with the federal government to be bound? And what notice do they have?" Gorsuch asked.
HANDCUFFED AND SHAVED
Landor, 46, had grown his hair over 20 years into long locks that reached his knees. In 2020, near the end of a five-month prison sentence for drug possession, he was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, Louisiana.
There, Landor reminded officials that the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals had already ruled in a 2017 case that Louisiana's policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarians violated the 2000 law, even handing over a copy of that ruling.
But a guard threw it in the trash, according to court documents, and Landor was then handcuffed to a chair, held down and shaved.
Landor, who lives in Slidell, Louisiana, sued, but a federal judge threw out his case. In 2023, the 5th Circuit upheld that decision.
Without a damages remedy, RLUIPA would provide no deterrent against abuse by officials, Landor's lawyers told the Supreme Court. Landor's lawyers have said RLUIPA is similar to a 1993 law called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act that prohibits religious infringement by the federal government.
In 2020, the Supreme Court allowed for money damages claims under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in a case involving a bid by three Muslim US citizens to sue FBI agents who they accused of placing the men on the government's "no-fly list" for refusing to become informants.
The court's three liberal justices seemed sympathetic to Landor. They pushed back on the idea that the individual officers did not have the required notice that they could face liability for money damages.
"We never think of needing some express consent to say, 'I'm bound by the law,'" Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Tripp.
But Gorsuch said that without such limits Congress could use the Spending Clause to permit lawsuits against employees in all sorts of scenarios.
"If a coach at a federal funds-receiving university allows biological men on a women's sports team, a female trying to make the team could sue for a million dollars. Or an employee of a federal funding recipient in a state agency dealing with family affairs gets an abortion, the father can sue the employee for a million dollars," Gorsuch said.
President Donald Trump's administration participated in the case, backing Landor.
The liberal justices noted that other federal statutes allow liability beyond the state entity that receives federal funding.
Ruling in favour of Louisiana in this case "would put at risk dozens of federal statutes, correct?" Sotomayor asked US Justice Department lawyer Libby Baird.
"I think that would be ground-breaking," Baird said of such a decision.
Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguinaga told the justices that they should leave it in the hands of Congress to allow for individual damages in RLUIPA.
