Trump Administration Argues Against Itself in Rastafarian Case

The Trump administration wants the Supreme Court to let a Rastafarian inmate sue Louisiana prison officials for shaving his head against his faith, breaking from its position in a similar religious liberty case five years ago.

The justices will hear Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety on Monday. The case asks whether the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act allows inmates to seek monetary damages from state officials for violating their religious rights.

At stake is how far the court’s conservative majority will extend religious protections when they collide with constitutional limits on Congress’ power to bind the states.

The court ruled in 2020 that RLUIPA’s sister statute, the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act, permits damages suits against federal officials. But lower courts have so far not extended that logic to state officials under RLUIPA.

Officials at Louisiana’s Raymond Laborde Correctional Center pinned down and shaved the plaintiff, Damon Landor, despite records noting his religious vow not to cut his hair.

Lower courts dismissed his suit, holding that RLUIPA doesn’t allow damages claims against state officials. He petitioned the Supreme Court after the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit affirmed. The justices agreed to hear the case in July at the urging of the US solicitor general’s office.

The administration’s brief puts it at odds with the position it took in 2020’s Tanzin v. Tanvir in which a unanimous Supreme Court ruled Muslim men could sue FBI agents individually under the Religious Freedom and Restoration Act.

The Trump administration now says “no sound basis exists” to treat the two laws differently, urging the justices to extend their ruling in Tanzin to state officials.

Trump 2.0

The solicitor general’s office said in a footnote in its brief that the new stance aligns with the government’s “longstanding view” that RFRA and RLUIPA should be read in tandem.

University of Texas School of Law professor Douglas Laycock said the shift likely reflects politics as much as principle. With Tanzin resolved, the government no longer faces the dilemma of defending federal officers and can back religious liberty claims that resonate with the president’s base.

“People in pews don’t care much about a Rastafarian, but the president can say they’re defending people in prisons of all religions,” said Laycock, a leading scholar on the law of religious liberty.

Both Trump administrations have mostly backed religious litigants who’ve made it to the high court, advancing cases that align with the president’s political agenda while sidelining others, said Elizabeth Reiner Platt, director of the Law, Rights & Religion Project at Union Theological Seminary.

Still, she said, Landor has drawn unusually broad support, with dozens of religious groups joining the administration’s position “across the theologicial and political spectrums”—making temporary allies of organizations that often oppose its policies.

Laycock, who is co-counsel on an amicus brief filed by the Christian Legal Society, said the case will test how far the court’s conservatives are willing to extend religious protections when they bump up against limits on Congress’ spending power.

“This is a court where the conservative majority is gung-ho about free exercise, but they also have traditional concerns about limits on the Spending Clause,” Laycock said. “So, it’s not clear how that will play out.”

The dispute turns on whether Congress’ power to attach conditions to federal funding—the basis for RLUIPA—reaches state officials who don’t receive that money directly.

Landor needs only a couple of conservative votes to prevail, Laycock said.

“I wouldn’t be astonished if they reverse 9-0,” Laycock said. “But neither would be I astonished if they reverse 6-3 or 5-4.”

Thread the Needle

The Supreme Court will have to square its decision in Tanzin with its 2011 ruling in Sossamon v. Texas, which held that states can’t be sued for money damages under RLUIPA.

The justices said in Sossamon that RLUIPA lacked the clear waiver of sovereign immunity needed to let inmates seek damages from state officials.

The Sossamon case also came out of the Fifth Circuit, which last year declined to rehear Landor’s appeal. It said “threading the needle” between Sossamon and Tanzin should be left to the Supreme Court.

Six judges dissented, led by James Ho, who said the circuit should revisit Sossamon in light of the more recent Tanzin ruling.

The case is Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, U.S., No. 23-1197.