America was founded by white men who claimed that European nations denied their right to religious freedom. Ironically, throughout much of this nation’s history, Black people have faced discrimination when their spiritual practices deviated from mainstream white Christianity. A recent legal case highlights this problem. In Landor v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 against a Black man who attempted to sue prison guards and other officials under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). Damon Landor, a Black man who’d grown his hair for twenty years, showed them a copy of the federal appeals court decision stating that Louisiana’s policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarian inmates violated federal law. Guards disregarded the decision, handcuffed him to a chair, and cut his knee-length hair.

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson argued that the majority decision meant “prisoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons — no matter how blatant — will be left remediless.” While the biblical Nazarite vow states “no razor shall pass over his head,” specifically prohibiting haircuts, Jackson argued that the prison guards “uncrowned him before God,” without any consideration for the legal precedent established for navigating such cases. Without the law acting as a deterrent, she argued, “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.” While Rastafarians represent a minority of Black Americans, this does not make their beliefs any less worthy. Yet the majority opinion dismisses the significance of their faith and, by extension, the religious freedom all citizens are entitled to.

Black people who wear locs face discrimination in schools, where they are more likely to be suspended or punished for wearing natural hairstyles, and in the workplace, where they are frequently denied opportunities or restricted to certain positions. For instance, before New Orleans passed the CROWN Act, which prohibits hair discrimination, I worked at a French Quarter restaurant whose policy prohibited Black men from wearing long hairstyles. One busser I worked with, a Rasta man, told me he had to cut off his hair if he wanted to work in the front-of-house, implying that he could only work in the kitchen or back-of-house if he refused to comply. Initially, he refused, but weeks later, for the sake of his family, he agreed to cut off his long locs. But the red-eyed, teary look he gave on his first day in the front-of-house exposed the emotional distress underlying this sacrifice. Managers pressured him into cutting his locs, forcing him to change something essential to his personality, character, and religious beliefs.

In a knee-jerk response to Landor v. Louisiana, some have brushed the issue aside as insignificant, suggesting that once someone is institutionalized, they lose all their rights and that it doesn’t matter whether their religious rights are protected. This, however, misinterprets the law. Those who are imprisoned are still entitled to fundamental constitutional rights, which may be limited only in the name of safety and security. While freedom of movement and privacy are restricted for incarcerated individuals, this doesn’t mean they lack the right to religious freedom. At Angola prison in Louisiana, there are inmate-led religious groups. Under the RLUIPA, prisons have honored dietary restrictions, for instance, for those who choose to eat kosher, halal, or vegan in accordance with their faith. The Civil Rights Division joined a lawsuit defending Sukhjinder Basara, a Sikh who faced disciplinary action after refusing to cut his hair because he believed “cutting one’s hair is a grievous sin.” Yet the Supreme Court’s ruling suggests the government is inconsistent on this matter. If it’s a “substantial burden” to ask a Sikh man to cut his hair, including his beard, then the same could be argued about a Rasta man. Both are religious justifications for a deviation from prison grooming policies, and yet the rights of a Black man were not seen as equally important to be upheld. Indeed, by crumpling up the paper Landor provided to officials, they clearly disregarded his religious freedom.

The discrimination Black Rastafarians experience in prison and within the workplace is reminiscent of Indian children forced to assimilate in boarding schools, where White Christians routinely cut students’ long hair to disconnect them from Indigenous cultural, religious, and spiritual practices. This historical injustice serves as a prime example of how religious and spiritual practices by people of color are often dismissed. A 1902 letter from the Office of Indian Affairs specifically noted that “the wearing of long hair by the male population of your agency is not in keeping with the advancement they are making, or will soon be expected to make, in civilization.” Instructions were given to “induce your male Indians to cut their hair, and both sexes to stop painting,” their skin, which was part of their customs. Such a policy set the tone that ultimately dismissed Indigenous cultural practices as barbaric, ultimately denying them religious freedom.

As someone who is a descendant of enslaved people in Louisiana, I’ve come to understand this dilemma all too well. When the French controlled the colony, they enforced the Code Noir, which stipulated that all residents had to practice Christianity, including the African men and women held in bondage by colonizers. My 5th great-grandfather, Sorlingue, who was born in Africa in 1707, was transported to Louisiana and enslaved by Captain Louis Paul Le Peletier de la Houssaye, making him someone directly impacted by these laws. To challenge restrictions on religious freedom, many Black people in the Attakapas or St. Martinville region practiced syncretism, a blend of West African spiritual practices and Roman Catholicism. As Jouline (2026) noted in their Oklahoma University thesis, the Code Noir “criminalized African spiritual practices, laying an early legal framework for policing Voodoo.” Those Black people who violated these expectations faced punishments, such as being whipped or branded.

While the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution protects the right of American citizens to practice whichever religion they choose, free from government interference, they have routinely deprived enslaved Black people of that right. Furthermore, throughout the Jim Crow Era, Black ministers were routinely targeted and labeled as troublemakers, rather than leaders entrusted by their communities to be stewards of their faith. Churches remained racially segregated throughout much of the country’s history, and at times, racist practices were enacted under the guise of white religious freedom. For example, Justices who originally struck down anti-miscegenation cases in Loving v. Virginia, noted “Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay, and red, and he placed them on separate continents,” suggesting that since God “separated the races,” that “he did not intend for the races to mix.” Given that religious freedom is constitutionally protected, and many hold quite different views, this argument was unconstitutional. Still, laws preventing interracial couples from marrying and cohabitating caused harm for centuries. Even today, there is a legal battle to require Texas students to read the Bible in public and private schools, a battle that exposes a clear bias.

Due to racism in American society, many were dismissive of the significance of Landor v. Louisiana. The image of guards holding down a Black man with long dreadlocks and cutting them may not seem like a big deal to some, but this event was clearly a traumatic event for the man, whose religious beliefs were trampled on. It doesn’t pass the “do unto others as you would have them do unto you” test. How ironic that America’s Constitution claims to protect religious freedom, but the Supreme Court recently sided with the prison guards who forcibly cut a man’s hair, in clear violation of his religious beliefs. Cases like this should make us question who is entitled to religious freedom in America. On paper, we all have the freedom to worship at our discretion, but in actuality, there’s a significant difference in terms of how Black people and some other marginalized groups are treated. By dismissing the clear-worded religious justification for maintaining his hairstyle, the highest court seems to have granted officials a pass to disregard the faith of Black people, who are not Christian.