Chandra Bozelko asks why more are not championing religious freedom for incarcerated individuals

Chandra Bozelko (Emerging Leaders™ 2016) writes, “At least in the public’s mind, conservative Christians are the standard bearers of religious freedom; a 2023 Pew Research Center survey found that 64 percent of respondents, regardless of political ideology, associate religious liberty cases primarily with Christian concerns.

“The case of Landor v. Louisiana Department of Corrections, which was argued on November 10, should shatter these assumptions. This case involves prisoner Damon Landor’s right to grow dreadlocks as a religious practice in accordance with his Rastafarian faith. In a scene that Justice Amy Coney Barrett twice called ‘egregious’ in oral argument, guards at the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center in Cottonport handcuffed Landor to a chair and forcibly sheared off the locks he had taken years to grow.

Landor represents precisely the kind of religious freedom issue that progressives have historically championed.

“It was 2020, and Landor had a copy in hand of the 2017 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that held that another Louisiana inmate was allowed to keep his dreads to support the argument he made to the prison staff. They threw the court’s opinion in the trash. Landor had only three weeks left on his five month sentence for possession of methamphetamine, possession of cocaine, and possession of amphetamine, hardly enough time to regrow his hair and keep it once the prison realized its error.

“Landor represents precisely the kind of religious freedom issue that progressives have historically championed. It should be getting all sorts of attention from actors on the left, like prison reform advocates. But it isn’t, and it’s worth asking why.

“The facts are straightforward: Landor argues that the state’s grooming policy violates his sincere Rastafarian beliefs by prohibiting the dreadlocks central to his faith and therefore violates the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act. Louisiana permits religious headwear and beards for other faiths but drew the line at dreadlocks, citing security concerns that courts in other states, including Illinois and Pennsylvania, had already found unpersuasive. After being sued over this policy twice, the state has since changed it.

“While the ultimate legal question centers on the ability of Landor to receive monetary damages, the Court’s consideration of this case isn’t just about one man’s dreads or the law that protects them. It’s a referendum on whose religious practices we deem worthy of accommodation, which should be a natural cause célèbre for organizations advocating for prisoners’ rights.

“Religious freedom for incarcerated people checks every box that typically animates progressive reform: challenging state power, protecting vulnerable populations, confronting discrimination against non-Christian minorities, and addressing the documented pattern of prison systems treating minorities as suspicious or dangerous. …

“Landor demonstrates why prison reform advocates cannot afford to cede religious freedom entirely to conservatives. The same legal framework that protects a Rastafarian’s dreadlocks also shields Muslim prayer practices, Indigenous spiritual ceremonies, and Buddhist meditation—precisely the minority religious expressions most vulnerable to state indifference or hostility. Minorities of all types—racial, ethnic, or religious—are disproportionately represented in prisons. The more progressive reform groups don’t miss an opportunity to remind the public of that.”

Read the full op-ed at ARCmag.org.