The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act protects the religious freedom of incarcerated people. Damon Landor, a devout Rastafarian, wore his hair in dreadlocks in accordance with his religion. After serving the first four months of his sentence at facilities where administrators respected his religious practice, that changed with his transfer to Raymond Laborde Correctional Center. There, when Landor showed the prison officials a printout of a Fifth Circuit decision holding that RLIUPA protected his right to keep his dreadlocks, they threw the decision into the trash, held him down, and shaved his head. When he sued the prison employees for violating his rights under RLIUPA, the district court held that RLIUPA does not provide for damages against individual state officials. The Fifth Circuit affirmed, and Landor asked the Supreme Court to hear his case.

In September 2025, CAC filed an amicus brief in support of Landor. Our brief makes three principal points.

First, Congress has broad discretion to make federal funding contingent on statutory conditions and craft remedies for violations of those conditions. The Spending Clause authorizes Congress to spend for the “general Welfare of the United States.” The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that Congress has substantial discretion to define “the concept of the general welfare” and exercise its spending power accordingly. When Congress grants federal funds to a state subject to conditions it deems to be in furtherance of the general welfare, it also has significant discretion to ensure compliance with those conditions, including by using its legislative power to craft remedies for noncompliance, such as private rights of action. The Constitution’s Necessary and Proper Clause underscores Congress’s authority in this area.

Second, the court below erred when it claimed to import contract law “wholesale” to rewrite RLIUPA’s express private right of action. The Supreme Court has used contract law principles to interpret the application of the Spending Clause in two limited scenarios: to ensure that funding recipients had sufficient notice of the specific conduct prohibited by Congress, and to fill in statutory gaps about the type of relief available. The Court has refused to employ the contract-law analogy to displace or invalidate clear statutory text, emphasizing that the contract-law analogy does not sanction incorporating contract law “wholesale.”

The contract-law analogy has limited utility in this case: it simply raises the question of whether state funding recipients had sufficient notice when they accepted federal funds that their employees may be held individually liable for damages if they violate RLUIPA’s substantive provisions. The answer to that question is yes. The Supreme Court has held that identical language in the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protected the ability to seek damages against state employees in their individual capacity. The Fifth Circuit supplied no reason to interpret the identical language in RLIUPA differently, because there is none.

Finally, there is no principled reason that state employees in particular may not be personally liable for damages under RLUIPA. RLUIPA does not impose liability on just anyone for violating its terms. It imposes liability on employees of the state. State employees are uniquely positioned as state actors to be held liable for actions in violation of funding terms that the state knowingly accepted.

Notably, just two years ago the Supreme Court reaffirmed that Spending Clause statutes, like all other federal laws, may give rise to privately enforceable rights pursuant to Section 1983 even where Congress does not include a cause of action in the statute itself. Here, Congress explicitly authorized private parties to enforce RLUIPA against state officials by importing Section 1983’s language into RLUIPA’s express cause of action. Rather than honor that statutory text, the Fifth Circuit effectively penalized Congress for its clarity.

The Supreme Court should reverse the Fifth Circuit, allowing Damon Landor to seek damages.