The United States (US) Supreme Court has ruled that a Rastafarian will not be able to sue Louisiana prison guards who held him down and shaved his head in 2020, an act he had argued was a violation of his religious rights.

US media reports indicate that the conservative majority court, in a 6-3 decision split along party lines, ruled that the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) did not entitle former inmate Damon Landor to monetary damages in the case.

The initial incident occurred when Landor was incarcerated in a Louisiana jail on a drug-related charge. Officers reportedly handcuffed him to a chair, cut his locs off and shaved his head.

While locs emerged in multiple cultures across history, the style is a key part of the Rastafarian faith, which originated in Jamaica in the 1930s.

Landor has maintained that he is a devout Rastafarian.

The Supreme Court justices, however, said that employees of the state had not consented to face lawsuits in their personal capacities under the law.

The decision, shared in an opinion by Justice Neil Gorsuch, said the law, which is enforceable in local prisons that receive federal funding, does not allow for legal challenges against individuals.

“Mr Landor would have us hold, for the first time, that so long as a penny of federal spending makes its way to an individual, however indirectly, Congress can regulate his conduct directly based on the fiction that he has consented to regulation,” Gorsuch wrote.

Criticism from Ketanji Brown Jackson, who wrote on behalf of the three liberal judges, who all dissented, highlighted that the law existed to ensure prisons respect the religious rights of prisoners.

She said the ruling could weaken the law in question and make it harder for inmates who have had their rights violated to seek justice.

“Prisoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons — no matter how blatant — will often be left remediless,” Jackson shared. “And encroachments on prisoners’ statutory rights are likely to happen with fair frequency, as state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper.”