I fought for this religious freedom law. The Supreme Court just weakened it.

By Richard D. Land, Christian Post Executive Editor Friday, July 03, 2026

Like multitudes of my fellow Americans, I have been enjoying the celebrations of our remarkable country’s 250th birthday.

Also, the month of June each year brings a flourish of Supreme Court rulings as the Court ends its current term and begins its recess until October. As in previous years, the Supreme Court issued numerous rulings during the last week of June.

Once again, like many other Americans, I found myself very pleased with some of the Court’s decisions and vexed by others. However, one decision in particular arrested my attention and disappointed me greatly.

The decision was Landor v. Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections. In this case, Damon Landor, a Rastafarian man, sued Louisiana prison officials for damages after they illegally shaved off his dreadlocks, violating his constitutionally protected First Amendment right to practice his religious faith. Mr. Landor was serving a five-month prison sentence on drug charges. With less than a month left to serve, he was transferred to a new jail. When he arrived, he gave prison officials a copy of a federal court ruling explaining that, under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), he had the right to keep his dreadlocks.

The prison guards threw the federal court ruling in the trash, put him in handcuffs and forcibly shaved his head. Mr. Landor sued the guards for damages, and the Court ruled against him in a 6–3 decision.

The Landor decision was particularly disappointing because, in recent years, the Court has generally skewed in favor of protecting individual religious rights. In her blistering dissent, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson concluded that Americans "who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons — no matter how blatant — will often be left remediless" and "prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper." 

I was among a large group of religious liberty advocates — conservative and liberal alike — who worked very hard to get the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act passed and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. This law was enacted precisely to prevent this kind of shameful trampling of incarcerated persons' constitutionally protected civil rights.

A very important principle is at stake here. If state government officials can violate the First Amendment rights of prisoners today, they may try to violate yours tomorrow.

I remember that, as a boy in the mid-1950s, we had a fairly sustained experience of people showing up at our front door at suppertime (5:30 p.m.) wanting to share their Jehovah's Witness or Mormon beliefs with us. My father, who had just arrived home from work, would have to interrupt his dinner, get up from the table and interact with them for at least a couple of minutes.

I asked my mother, "Why can't the government stop people from coming around and doing that at dinnertime every day?"

My mother, who was raised as a Baptist in New England, replied, "Richard, if we allow the government to stop them from sharing their faith today, what is to stop it from prohibiting us from sharing our faith tomorrow?" Those are words of wisdom to always remember.

Even prisoners are our fellow citizens, and we should accommodate their religious rights unless there is a compelling reason not to do so. In protecting their rights, we are protecting ours as well.

As Thomas Jefferson reminded us more than two centuries ago, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty!"