In 2020, Rastafarian Damon Landor was transferred to a new prison in Louisiana; he was just weeks away from completing his sentence. He brought a copy of a 2017 appeals court ruling that emphasized his right to wear dreadlocks. Prison guards handcuffed Landor and shaved off his knee-length locs anyway, throwing the ruling in the trash. But the core of this case, now at the Supreme Court, isn’t about Landor.
The conservative-majority court, while typically fond of religious protections, will likely rule against Landor’s right to sue prison officials and enforce federal spending laws. State officials warned of staffing shortages, as prison staff feared financial consequences for breaking the law. But that’s the point.
Without suing rights, leverage vanishes. Authorities will be even less accountable than they already are. And, according to Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, there’s a bigger plan for this case.
In 2023, Jackson authored a ruling reaffirming decades of precedent of Medicaid patients’ suing abilities, including our right to choose our doctors and be protected from discrimination. SCOTUS’s Landor decision could diminish those rights.
It starts small. But for years, courts have trampled on our rights—as patients, women, incarcerated people, voters, citizens, and infinitely more. If our rights exist but we have no legal way to enforce them, how else can we demand justice? For Black America especially, that question isn’t rhetorical.