U.S. Supreme Court to rule over Rastafarian inmate hair religious exempts
June 23 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday took on a new religious case regarding a former Louisiana inmate of Rastafarian belief whose dreadlocks were forcibly cut off by prison officials, but only after after a lower court "emphatically" condemned the ex-inmate's treatment as he seeks financial relief.
Damon Landor served all but three weeks of a five-month jail sentence in 2020 on a drug-related criminal conviction when he was transferred to Raymond Laborde Correction Center in Avoyelles Parish roughly 30 miles south of Alexandria in east-central Louisiana.
He took with him a copy of a 2017 decision by the state's 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals saying Louisiana's policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarians violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, and Landor then showed the intake guard.
The federal act forbids regulations that impose a "substantial burden" on the religious exercise of jailed persons, but a prison official rebuffed his concern.
He was eventually handcuffed to a chair held down by two guards while a third shaved him bald on the warden's instructions order, according to Landor's legal appeal.
Landor's lawsuit pointed to a number of claims such as the issue at play under the federal RLUIPA.
The appeal noted the Supreme Court's 2020 ruling that government officials can be sued in their individual capacity for damages for violations of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and that relevant language in the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act was identical.
In court papers, Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the state did not disagree that Landor was mistreated and noted how the prison system had reportedly switched its policy to accommodate Rastafarian prisoners, but Murrill added that Landor's lawsuit didn't qualify for compensation as relief.
However, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said that to deny Landor the option to seek damages as a remedy in a purported violation of RLUIPA would "undermine that important purpose."
"And the circumstances precluding relief here are not unique," Sauer wrote in a court filing.
Landor's legal team noted in a legal petition how more than one million people are incarcerated in state prisons and local jails.
"Under the prevailing rule in the circuit courts, those individuals are deprived of a key remedy crucial to obtaining meaningful relief," the law firm of Weil, Gotshal & Manges and Casey Denson wrote in its agreement with Sauer, adding that the broad implications warrant court review.
Meanwhile, the nation's high court is expected to hear oral arguments in the case and issue a ruling during its next term starting October and ending June 2026.
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