Supreme Court Shields Shavers — No Damages

A man’s dreadlocks were shaved off in a prison chair, everyone admits it violated federal religious rights law, and yet the Supreme Court says the people who did it cannot be sued for a single dollar.

Story Snapshot

Guards cut off a Rastafarian inmate’s dreadlocks even after he showed them a federal court ruling protecting his hair.
Every level of government agreed his religious rights were violated under federal law.
The Supreme Court said the law that protects prisoners’ religion does not clearly allow money damages from individual officers.
Conservative justices backed that reading; liberal justices warned it leaves officials little reason to follow the law.

How a man lost his locks and his day in court

Damon Landor spent more than twenty years growing his dreadlocks as part of his Rastafarian faith.^[7] His hair was not style; it was a vow and a core part of his religious identity.

When Louisiana locked him up for about five months in 2020 on a minor drug charge, he did not walk in blind. He carried proof.

That proof was a ruling by a federal appeals court holding that prisons could not force religious inmates to cut dreadlocks under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, often called RLUIPA.^[12]

He handed that ruling to a guard. According to court records, the guard tossed it in the trash, and staff then handcuffed Landor to a chair and shaved his head bald.^[12]

That single act wiped away decades of religious practice in minutes. The lower courts and the Supreme Court all described what happened as wrong. Even the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals “lamented” his treatment and said the prison violated his rights under federal law.^[1]

CBS News reported that “everyone agrees” the law protected his religious practice and the guards violated those rights when they shaved his head anyway.^[7]

Yet Landor’s lawsuit asking for money damages from the officials who ordered and carried out the shaving hit a wall built into the way Congress wrote RLUIPA.

What the Supreme Court actually decided, and why it matters

The key fight was not over what happened, but over what the law lets a prisoner do about it. RLUIPA protects religious exercise in state prisons that take federal funds. It says people can sue for “appropriate relief” when officials place a substantial burden on religious practice.^[12]

Landor argued “appropriate relief” includes money damages from individual officers, just as the Court allowed under the similar Religious Freedom Restoration Act when Muslim men sued Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents over a no-fly list.^[12] Justice Neil Gorsuch, writing for a six-justice conservative majority, disagreed.

Louisiana Rastafarian man can’t sue prison staff who shaved his dreadlocks, Supreme Court says https://t.co/YGmG7cYCN3 pic.twitter.com/4jon5aAFEk

— The Advocate (@theadvocatebr) June 23, 2026

The Court said RLUIPA operates like a contract between the federal government and the state prison system: the state accepts federal funds and promises to respect religious rights.^[6]

Individual guards and wardens never signed that deal. In the majority’s view, nothing in the statute’s text clearly authorizes suing those people in their personal capacity for cash.

The Court stressed that ten federal courts of appeals had already ruled that RLUIPA does not allow personal-capacity damages suits against prison officials.^[16]

The justices chose not to extend their 2020 damages precedent under the sister statute to prisoners in the Muslim no-fly case.^[3]

Dissent, incentives, and a gap in religious liberty protection

The three liberal justices saw the same facts and text and reached a very different bottom line. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that RLUIPA’s whole purpose is to make sure states and prisons respect the right to religious exercise.^[1]

She warned that if officials can openly violate those rights, as everyone agrees they did here, and still face no personal financial consequence, then “state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law.”^[1]

Outside observers echo that worry. The American Civil Liberties Union has long argued that people in prison are especially vulnerable and need strong enforcement of religious liberty, which is why Congress passed RLUIPA in the first place.^[18]

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has documented repeated problems: denied religious diets, banned head coverings, and other routine violations in prisons.^[19]

When courts respond with “yes, your rights were violated, but we cannot grant damages against the people who did it,” they leave a hole where deterrence should be.

Where the law goes next and what Congress could do

For Landor himself, the Supreme Court’s ruling shuts the door on damages against the Louisiana officers who shaved his dreadlocks. But the decision also sends a clear message to Congress.

The Court did not say prisoners can never get money, only that RLUIPA does not clearly authorize suits against individual officers. Jan Crawford noted that the justices “left it to Congress” to clarify whether prisoners can recover damages under this law.^[7]

If lawmakers care about religious freedom behind bars, they can amend RLUIPA to clarify that personal-capacity damages are available when officers knowingly violate clearly established rights.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday barred a former Louisiana inmate from suing prison officials who cut off his dreadlocks in violation of his Rastafari religious beliefs. https://t.co/pJFA5IZByP

— WGNO-TV (ABC) New Orleans (@WGNOtv) June 24, 2026

From this perspective, which respects both religious liberty and limited government, the path is simple but politically difficult. Congress can draw tight lines: allow damages for intentional or reckless violations of clearly settled law, while shielding states from crushing, open-ended liability.

That would hold bad actors to account without “bankrupting” state systems, as some attorneys general feared in this case.^[16]

It would also send a basic message most Americans across the spectrum can support: if you strap a man to a chair, throw his court ruling in the trash, and strip his faith from his scalp, the law should do more than sigh and walk away.