Washington – Washington (AP) – The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to hear the appeal of a former prison in Louisiana whose dreadlocks were cut by prison guards in violation of his religious convictions.
The judges will examine a decision of appeal which judged that the former detainee, Damon Landor, could not continue the prison officials for damages under a federal law aimed at protecting the religious rights of prisoners.
Landor, a member of the Rastafari religion, even brought a copy of a decision of the Court of Appeal in the case of another detainee according to which the reduction of the Dreadlocks of religious prisoners violates the religious law of land use and institutionalized persons.
Landor had not cut his hair for almost two decades when he entered the Louisiana penitentiary system in 2020 in five months. During his first two judgments, the authorities respected his beliefs. But things have changed when he arrived at the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) northwest of Red Baton, for the last three weeks of his mandate.
A prison guard took the copy of the Landor in power transported and threw him in the trash, according to the judicial archives. Then the director ordered the guards to cut his dreadlocks. While two guards held him, a third shaved his head towards the scalp, the files show.
Landor continued after his release, but the lower courts rejected the case. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals deplored the treatment of Landor, but said that the law did not allow it to hold the prison officials responsible for damages.
The Supreme Court will hear arguments in the fall.
Landor lawyers argue that the court should be guided by its decision in 2021, allowing Muslim men to continue their inclusion on the FBI non-theft list under a sister law, Religious Freedom Restoration Act.
President Donald Trump’s republican administration has filed a brief right to continue the law of Landor to continue and urged the court to hear the case.
Louisiana asked the judges to reject the appeal, even if it recognized Landor’s ill -treatment.
State lawyers wrote that “the state has changed its prison grooming policy to ensure that nothing like the alleged experience of the petitioner can take place.”
Faith Rastafari is rooted in Jamaica in the 1930s, growing up in response by blacks to white colonial oppression. His beliefs are a merger of the teachings of the Old Testament and a desire to return to Africa. His message was widespread worldwide in the 1970s by Jamaican music icons Bob Marley and Peter Tosh, two of the most famous representatives of faith.
The case is Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, 23-1197.
