The US Supreme Court says a Rasta man who was shaved by prison guards will not be prosecuted | Court Affairs

The Supreme Court has upheld a ruling that inmates cannot sue prison staff for defrauding them under the Religious Freedom Act.

United States Supreme Court He has confirmed that the Rasta man will not retaliate against the prison authorities who cut off his dreadlocks for violating his own religious beliefs.

On Tuesday, a jury ruled that former inmate Damon Landor could not sue prison officials for violating the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), a law that states promote religious freedom for those in prison.

Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch did not say that Landor’s religious rights had not been violated.

Instead, he wrote that it was inappropriate to charge the prison officials, because they did not plead guilty under RLUIPA.

“Mr. Landor’s case cannot go against him any more than a breach of contract can go against a defendant who never entered into a contract,” Gorsuch wrote.

The ruling echoed a lower court ruling that found that inmates cannot seek monetary damages from individual workers, even when their rights have been violated.

Landor, however, released a statement through his lawyers indicating that he will continue to pursue justice.

“I am disappointed but not defeated,” Landor said in a statement from his attorneys. “What happened to me shattered my faith and my dignity. I will continue to hold myself accountable. What happened to me should not happen to anyone else.”

Landor spent five months in prison in Louisiana in 2020. He is a member of the Rasta religion, a religion that requires him to grow his hair as a symbol of his faith.

As he entered the prison, he carried a 2017 appeals court ruling that found it a violation of state law to cut off the nipples of a religious prisoner.

At first, prison officials respected Landor’s beliefs. But after he was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Louisiana, a prison guard threw the document in the trash, and the warden ordered him to cut his hair, according to court filings.

Two guards held Landor down while a third shaved his head.

Writing to the six-member majority, Gorsuch argued that the law places responsibility on state or local agencies that receive federal money, not on an individual employee, because he did not allow them to be prosecuted under the law.

Three of the court’s judges dissented, saying that RLUIPA is a statute and not a treaty.

In writing the dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the distinction was important. The prison authorities, he said, have no reason to obey the rules for the protection of prisoners, without any consequences for what they did.

“It is not often that the facts clearly reflect Congress’s reasons for enacting legislation, or the wisdom of the Constitution to enforce it,” Brown Jackson wrote.