Not since the 1990s has CLS’s Center for Law & Religious Freedom united diverse organizations including the ACLU, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, the Religious Freedom Institute, the Coalition of Virtue, Prison Fellowship, the National Association of Evangelicals, the Center for Public Justice, and the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission.
What’s the occasion? Upcoming oral arguments at the Supreme Court regarding the protection of religious freedoms for prisoners. The issue? Whether an individual sue a government official in his individual capacity for damages for violating the religious Land Use and Institutionalized Person Act of 2000. The case? In Landor v. Louisiana Dept. of Corrections, former inmate Damon Landor was forcibly held down while officers shaved his dreadlocks without justification—and after “tossing in the trash a copy of a federal court decision that Landor gave them upholding Rastafarian prisoners’ right to wear dreadlocks.”
In the recently filed amicus brief, this powerfully diverse group united behind the reasoning that RILUPA was passed for cases just like this. Without imposing liability on prison officials for egregious violations of this nature, religious freedom in our nation’s prison system is not secure for any faith.
