Case in Point July/August
July/August 2026Supreme Court Ruling Leaves Prison Religious Rights Without a Remedy
The Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in June that Damon Landor, a former Louisiana prisoner and Rastafari adherent, cannot seek money damages from individual prison officials who allegedly violated his religious rights by cutting off his hair, or “locs.” Rastas view locs as a fulfillment of the biblical Nazarite vow, which forbids cutting one’s hair.
During his five-month prison term in 2020, Landor carried a copy of a court ruling protecting religious hair practices under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA. Two Louisiana facilities accommodated Landor, but when he was transferred to a third prison, an officer allegedly threw away his papers, and guards restrained Landor while his head was shaved.
The question before the Court was not whether prisoners have religious liberty rights. RLUIPA says they do. The question was whether those rights come with a practical remedy after the damage is done.
Writing for the majority, Justice Neil Gorsuch said that RLUIPA operates like a funding agreement between the federal government and state prison systems. Individual employees, he concluded, did not personally agree to be sued for damages. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, warning that the ruling leaves a right without a remedy. For former prisoners like Landor, an injunction comes too late. Without damages, religious liberty violations may be acknowledged—but not meaningfully redressed.
Trump Religious Liberty Panel Targets Church-State Separation
President Donald Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission has issued a draft report urging a significant shift in federal policy on church-state separation, arguing that the phrase has too often been used to exclude religious expression from public life.
The report, America’s First Freedom, calls on the Department of Justice to issue guidance reflecting an “originalist” view of the establishment clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That approach would give wider latitude to religious speech and symbolism in government settings, public schools, the military, health care, and partnerships between government and faith-based organizations. The commission also recommended the repeal of the Johnson Amendment, the federal tax rule that bars churches and other tax-exempt nonprofits from endorsing or opposing political candidates.
Critics warn that weakening church-state separation risks blurring the line between religious freedom and driving government favoritism of specific religions, particularly majority faiths.
Federal Employees Sue Over Religious Messages
Seven employees of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a federal workers’ union have sued Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins, alleging that her official communications to staff crossed the line from holiday observance into unconstitutional religious coercion. The complaint focuses especially on a 2026 Easter message sent to the agency workforce and says non-Christian employees felt pressured, excluded, or afraid to object. The suit frames the issue as an establishment clause challenge inside the federal workplace.
Pope Leo XIV Questions AI’s “Culture of Power”
Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, places artificial intelligence squarely within the moral concerns of Catholic social teaching, warning that technology must serve human dignity rather than profit, efficiency, or control. Signed May 15, 2026, on the 135th anniversary of Leo XIII’s Rerum Novarum, the document draws a parallel between the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution and today’s AI revolution. The encyclical echoes concerns raised by some human rights activists who believe these evolving technologies are concentrating power in systems that shape belief, work, privacy, and public life without adequate moral restraint.
Fourth Circuit Upholds Virginia’s Theology-Major Exclusion
The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld Virginia’s Tuition Assistance Grant Program, which provides aid to some private college students but excludes those pursuing degrees in religious training or theological education. The court said the case was controlled by the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Locke v. Davey, which allowed Washington State to deny scholarship funds for devotional theology study even while supporting other fields of education. Although later decisions in Trinity Lutheran, Espinoza, and Carson strengthened protections for religious participation in public-benefit programs, the Fourth Circuit said those cases did not overrule Locke. Judge Richardson concurred separately, calling Locke “wrongly decided” and a “moth-eaten shell of its former self,” but acknowledged that lower courts remain bound by it. The ruling highlights an unsettled fault line in religious liberty law: whether government may fund religious schools and students generally while drawing the line at training for ministry or theology.