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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear a former Louisiana prisoner's case for damages after guards forcibly shaved his head, removing the dreadlocks he maintained as part of his Rastafarian religion.

The man, Damon Landor, was in the midst of a five-month sentence for drug possession when he was moved to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center. When he got there, Landor claimed, he gave guards a copy of a Fifth Circuit ruling from 2017 stating that prisoners were allowed to keep their dreadlocks while in custody, only to watch the guards throw the copy in the garbage and cut his hair.

Landor is seeking money damages against the guards, but a Fifth Circuit panel last year upheld a district court ruling that he couldn't pursue damages against the officials. In an 11-6 vote, the full circuit court denied his bid for an en banc rehearing, but on Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, which will feature the question of whether an individual can sue government officials for damages over violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA, of 2000.

In the 2017 decision, from Ware v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, a Fifth Circuit panel ruled that the state's corrections department hadn't adequately explained why its grooming policy — which prohibited dreadlocks — only covered inmates in department prisons and not those housed in parish jails, who made up roughly half of all DOC inmates. If the grooming policies really served compelling interests like hygiene, identification and contraband control, the panel said, then they would have been universally applied.

"The grooming policies' underinclusiveness, unrebutted by adequate explanation, gives rise to the inference that they do not serve a compelling interest," the circuit panel said.

Landor's challenge centers on two "sister" statutes: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — or RFRA — of 1993 and RLUIPA. Both bar the government from substantially burdening an individual's exercise of religion without a compelling interest, but the 2000 law applies specifically to people "residing in or confined to an institution."

In 2020's Tanzin v. Tanvir, the Supreme Court held that individuals can sue government officials in their individual capacities for RFRA violations. But the Fifth Circuit ruled in Landor's case that officials can't be sued in their official capacities for RLUIPA violations, despite the Supreme Court having described the two laws in other cases as "sister" statutes with "mirroring" text.

Without the ability to seek damages, Landor said in his certiorari petition from last year, "RLUIPA's promise was empty."

"The [circuit] panel could respond only by writing in italics that it 'emphatically condemn[ed]' Landor's mistreatment — as it dismissed his claims and left Landor with no relief whatsoever," his attorneys wrote. "That is a telltale sign that this court's intervention is needed."

Writing in opposition to the petition, Louisiana's attorney general's office called the allegations "antithetical to religious freedom and fair treatment of state prisoners," and pointed out that the state had already revised its grooming policy. But the state said that no circuit split exists to make it appropriate for the justices, because 10 different federal appellate courts have unanimously held that money damages are unavailable for individual capacity claims in RLUIPA cases.

"Petitioner thus faces a wall of precedent from coast to coast foreclosing his view that RLUIPA permits money damages against state officials sued in their individual capacities," the state wrote. "And — as petitioner agrees ... — this wall remains unbreached even after Tanzin."

The Fifth Circuit's 2023 panel decision fell in line with the opinion of the other circuits, with the court upholding a district court's dismissal of Landor's case by finding that the Tanzin decision didn't abrogate an earlier decision from the circuit court that RLUIPA doesn't allow for money damages.

In U.S. Circuit Judge Efith Brown Clement's opinion, the judge wrote that the Tanzin decision only refers to the RLUIPA as a "related statute" when discussing the RFRA. And the two laws — despite their overlapping language — rely on different congressional powers, the panel said, with the RFRA based in the Fourteenth Amendment and the RLUIPA based in the Spending and Commerce Clauses.

"The Supreme Court has often held 'that identical language may convey varying content when used in different statutes, [and] sometimes even in different provisions of the same statute,'" Judge Clement wrote.

The judge also pointed to 1932's Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers v. United States, in which the high court held that when the legislative power exercised in one case is broader than in another, the same words may mean different things "to meet the purposes of the law … and of the circumstances under which the language was employed."

"That's the case here," Judge Clement said. "Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment and the Spending Clause do not empower Congress to the same degree, and Tanzin does nothing to fill that gap."

The high court's grant of certiorari Monday tees up yet another religious freedom case for a court that has been particularly sympathetic to plaintiffs claiming to be burdened in their religious expression.

And the executive branch has weighed in as well. Landor got support in his petition from U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, who in May filed an amicus brief arguing that RLUIPA should allow for individual damages suits. In it, Sauer wrote that the Tanzin decision should control, and that because the RFRA — which that decision said allowed for money damages — is so similar to the RLUIPA, it would stand to reason that the same holding should apply.

"Although relying on different sources of constitutional authority, those twin statutes use nearly identical language to impose nearly identical requirements for nearly identical purposes," the amicus brief said. "Unsurprisingly, this court has repeatedly recognized that RFRA and RLUIPA should be interpreted in harmony."

The court got another amicus filing from a coalition of 33 religious organizations from different faiths led by the Muslim Bar Association of New York. They argued that money damages aren't just authorized by the text of the statute, but that they are "crucial" to its enforcement.

"Money damages compensate the plaintiff, deter future wrongdoing and vindicate the plaintiff's rights," the organizations wrote. "And in the RLUIPA context specifically, money damages are often the only form of relief available. Many inmates suing under RLUIPA are released or transferred by the time their claims are adjudicated and therefore have no injunctive claims."

Landor is represented by Zachary D. Tripp, Shai Berman, Natalie Howard and Sarah Sternlieb of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, as well as Casey Denson of Casey Denson Law LLC.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety is represented by Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth B. Murrill, Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga, and Kelsey L. Smith, Autumn Hamit Patterson and Phyllis E. Glazer of the Louisiana Attorney General's Office.

The federal government is represented by U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, as well as Harmeet K. Dhillon, Yaakov M. Roth, Sarah M. Harris, Sopan Joshi, Yael Bortnick, Michael S. Raab and Lowell V. Sturgill Jr. of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The religious organizations are represented by Daniel S. Ruzumna, Jacob I. Chefitz and Sean M. Lau of Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP.

The case is Damon Landor, Petitioner v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, et al., case number 23-1197 in the United States Supreme Court.

--Editing by Alyssa Miller.

Update: This story has been updated with more details.