US supreme court blocks Rastafarian man’s lawsuit over forced head-shaving in prison

The US supreme court refused on Tuesday to let a Rastafarian man sue ⁠state prison officials in Louisiana ⁠after guards held him ​down and shaved him bald in violation of his religious beliefs, in a landmark case. The case was brought under a federal law designed to protect incarcerated people from religious discrimination. The court, in a ⁠6-3 opinion, upheld a lower court’s decision to dismiss Damon Landor’s lawsuit because it found the statute at issue did not permit him to sue the individual ⁠prison officials and guards for monetary damages. Landor’s religion requires him to let his hair grow. The court’s three liberal justices dissented ​from the opinion. The law, called the Religious Land Use ‌and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) of 2000, ‌prohibits religious discrimination by state and local governments in land-use regulations and also protects the religious rights of people confined ‌to institutions such as prisons and jails. The Trump administration backed Landor, urging the supreme court to revive the case. The court had expanded the rights of religious people and institutions in a series of opinions in recent years. It heard arguments in the case in November. Landor grew his hair over a span of 20 years into long locks that reached his knees. In 2020, near the end of ‌a five-month prison sentence for drug possession, Landor was transferred to the Raymond Laborde correctional center in Cottonport, Louisiana . …