Fifth Circuit Pitches Supreme Court on Religious Liberty Case

The US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit split over whether they could rule for a prisoner’s ability to get money damages for alleged violations of his religious rights, or if the US Supreme Court should resolve the question.

The New Orleans-based court said in an order Tuesday that it wouldn’t rehear en banc a September panel ruling against Damon Landor, a Rastafarian who alleged state prison employees in Louisiana illegally and forcibly shaved his hair. That was in violation of a 2017 ruling from the court that said the federal Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act meant Louisiana couldn’t force Rastafarians to cut their hair.

Landor sued a state prison and others, including corrections officials, in their official and individual capacities, but the three-judge panel said they were bound by circuit precedent that held prisoners can’t sue state government officials in their individual capacities for money damages under that law.

On Tuesday, Judges Edith Brown Clement, James Graves and Stephen Higginson stood by their opinion and were among the court members who voted against rehearing the case en banc. In a statement joined by eight of the court’s active judges, Brown wrote that the question of whether there’s a damages remedy under the act “is a question only the Supreme Court can answer.”

Brown wrote that while the en banc court could have overruled its prior decision against being able to collect damages against state government officials in their individual capacities, the court would have then faced Supreme Court precedent finding that the act didn’t allow for damages when those officials are sued in their official capacity.

The judges noted that the high court said in the 2020 case Tanzin v. Tanvir that, under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, federal officials can be sued in their individual capacities. “But threading the needle” between that decision and the prior ruling against state officials “is a task best reserved for the court that wrote those opinions,” Brown said.

Judges Andrew Oldham, Jerry Smith, Jennifer Walker Elrod, Don Willett, James Ho, and Kyle Duncan voted in favor of rehearing the case. In a statement joined by those other five judges, Oldham argued that the Fifth Circuit regularly considers the two religious freedom laws raised in the case together, and could have done so for Landor.

“In short, not only is the relevant text in RLUIPA identical to that in RFRA, but Supreme Court precedent also commands us to interpret the two statutes in tandem,” Oldham wrote. “Given Tanzin, RLUIPA (like RFRA) authorizes damages suits against state officials.”

Ho also wrote a separate dissent, joined by Elrod. He argued that the Supreme Court’s 2011 ruling in Sossamon v. Texas, which said money damages under RLUIPA wasn’t “appropriate relief,” applied to lawsuits against states, which have sovereign immunity. “Individuals, by contrast, do not enjoy sovereign immunity,” Ho wrote. “So Sossamon should have no bearing on suits against individual officers in their individual capacities.”

The case isLandor v. Louisiana Dept of Corr, 5th Cir., No. 22-30686, 2/6/24