WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court on June 23 said it will decide whether prison officials can be sued for violating the religious rights of an inmate in a case involving a Rastafarian whose dreadlocks were forcibly shaved by Louisiana prison guards.
The dreadlocks that Damon Landor had been growing for nearly two decades were supposed to be protected by a 2000 law related to the religious rights of prisoners.
Landor had shown prison officials a copy of a court ruling that dreadlocks grown for religious reasons should be accommodated.
But an intake guard threw the ruling in the trash and Landor was handcuffed to a chair while his knee-length locks were forcibly shaved off.
The state condemns what happened to Landor “in the strongest possible terms,” officials wrote in a filing which emphasized that the Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety has amended its grooming policy to prevent a repeat of Landor's ordeal.
