The Supreme Courtroom’s resolution in Landor v. Louisiana is an ideal instance of how conservatives strip rights from individuals by abstracting them away. The court docket’s conservative majority didn’t actually wish to speak about Damon Landor and the way Louisiana corrections officers brazenly and flagrantly violated his non secular liberty rights.
So, they buried that straightforward story in a sprawling monstrosity of a dialogue in regards to the Spending Clause, the Crucial and Correct Clause, and contract legislation. All that verbiage, nonetheless, can’t obscure what occurred right here, which is that the court docket’s conservatives determined that the Non secular Land Use and Institutionalized Individuals Act, handed by Congress to explicitly shield the non secular rights of incarcerated individuals, doesn’t actually apply to all religions.
The info of the case are so simple as they’re appalling.
Landor is a training Rastafari who has taken the Nazarite vow, which requires adherence to the Biblical necessities specified by Numbers 6, notably Numbers 6:5: “All the times of the vow of his separation no razor shall come across his head; till the times are fulfilled for which he separated himself to the Lord, he shall be holy. Then he shall let the locks of the hair of his head develop.”
In line with his religion, Landor had grown his hair for almost 20 years. Throughout two earlier incarcerations, the correctional amenities adopted the legislation and didn’t power him to chop his locs.
When Landor was transferred to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Heart in Louisiana, he introduced with him state and federal types explaining the necessities for non secular lodging and a replica of a Fifth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals case that particularly held that prohibiting locs in correctional amenities violated RLUIPA.
In an nearly comically blatant violation of the legislation, the consumption officer threw Landor’s paperwork within the trash and summoned the warden, who demanded Landor present non secular documentation from the sentencing choose. When Landor supplied to get that documentation from his former lawyer, the warden stated it was “too late for that,” and Landor was forcibly shackled and shaved bald.
Right here’s the place the procedural trickery is available in, a option to fully deprive Landor of the flexibility to get justice for a profound violation of his non secular beliefs.
This incident occurred when Landor had solely three weeks remaining in his sentence. Upon his launch, he sued the warden, the state corrections secretary, and the jail guards. Each the federal district court docket and the Fifth Circuit dominated that Landor’s proper to reduction beneath RLUIPA was restricted to injunctive reduction—a choice that may bar jail officers from taking a sure motion. And since Landor was now now not incarcerated, his declare was moot.
RLUIPA, the bulk determined, doesn’t permit for a “non-public reason for motion” for damages towards particular person officers, so Landor was out of luck.
You see the issue right here, in fact. Injunctive reduction would solely have been precise reduction if someway Landor had managed to file a lawsuit within the transient time earlier than he was shackled and forcibly shaved. Since that was unattainable, Landor’s recourse was to sue the jail officers of their official capability.
Nope, stated the conservative majority. Landor may solely sue officers who’ve voluntarily agreed to be sure by RLUIPA. You get one guess as as to whether any state officers would determine to voluntarily comply with be sure by a legislation they clearly despise
The court docket’s conservatives beloved this loophole, saying that RLUIPA is absolutely extra like a contract than a legislation, and for the reason that jail officers didn’t comply with be sure by that contract, they couldn’t be liable.
Who knew that one may merely choose out of being sure by legal guidelines?
This case was a uncommon one which united individuals throughout the non secular and ideological spectrum. Hyperconservative organizations just like the Becket Fund, ACLJ, and the non secular liberty clinic at Notre Dame, the place Justice Amy Coney Barrett taught for 15 years, filed amicus briefs on Landor’s aspect, together with teams comparable to a gaggle of Rastafari students and the Nationwide Police Accountability Undertaking.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s dissent calls out the bulk for its hypocrisy, a factor that’s turning into a distressingly common prevalence, by declaring {that a} statute with an identical language, the Non secular Freedom Restoration Act, permits for lawsuits in search of damages from particular person authorities officers, a factor the Supreme Courtroom unanimously affirmed simply six years in the past.
Her dissent additionally highlights that almost all principally gave permission to jail officers to simply ignore the legislation: “Prisoners like Landor who are suffering violations of their non secular freedom in state prisons—regardless of how blatant—will typically be left remediless. And encroachments on prisoners’ statutory rights are more likely to occur with honest frequency, as state-empowered jail officers can have little incentive to abide by federal legislation, even whether it is handed to them on a bit of paper.”
One can presume the bulk may not be so fast to throw away the rights of the non secular litigants it likes—comparable to evangelical Christians—however making it almost unattainable for non secular minorities to acquire reduction is appropriate. Non secular liberty for me however not for thee certainly.
