WASHINGTON, DC – Following today’s decision at the Supreme Court in Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, a case in which the Court considered whether an individual may sue government officials in their individual capacity for damages for violating the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, Constitutional Accountability Center Chief Counsel Brianne Gorod issued the following reaction:

The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) protects the free exercise rights of people incarcerated in federally funded prisons, and it gives them an express cause of action against state officers to vindicate those rights. The Court’s decision today undermines that right by denying individuals the ability to seek damages from officials who violate that directive.

As Justice Jackson, joined by Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, wrote in dissent, “Today’s decision magically transforms a federal statute into an invitation to be accepted or declined, deemed binding only if each particular defendant has explicitly agreed to be penalized. No matter that laws, as opposed to contracts, don’t ordinarily work this way.”

As Justice Jackson further explains, and as we argued in the amicus brief we filed in the case, the Court has previously used contract-law principles to interpret the application of the Spending Clause only in two limited scenarios, and it 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 Court’s majority was wrong to stray from that approach today.