Landor v. Louisiana Dept of Corrections

Case: 22-30686 Document: 00516895282 Page: 1 Date Filed: 09/14/2023

United States Court of Appeals

for the Fifth Circuit

United States Court of Appeals

Fifth Circuit

____________ FILED

September 14, 2023

No. 22-30686 Lyle W. Cayce

____________ Clerk

Damon Landor,

Plaintiff—Appellant,

versus

Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public

Safety; James M. LeBlanc, in his official capacity as Secretary thereof,

and individually; Raymond Laborde Correctional Center;

Marcus Myers, in his official capacity as Warden thereof, and

individually; John Does 1-10; ABC Entities 1-10,

Defendants—Appellees.

______________________________

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the Middle District of Louisiana

USDC No. 3:21-CV-733

______________________________

Before Clement, Graves, and Higginson, Circuit Judges.

Edith Brown Clement, Circuit Judge:

The question presented is whether the Religious Land Use and

Institutionalized Persons Act (“RLUIPA”) provides for money damages

against officials sued in their individual capacities. Because we’ve already

answered that question in the negative, we AFFIRM.

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No. 22-30686

I.

Damon Landor is a devout Rastafarian who vowed to “let the locks of

the hair of his head grow,” a promise known as the Nazarite Vow. See

Numbers 6:5. 1 Landor kept that promise—for almost two decades, he didn’t

cut his hair. But that changed when he arrived at the Raymond Laborde

Correctional Center.

Stepping back, Landor was incarcerated in 2020. During his brief stint

in prison, Landor was primarily housed at two facilities, St. Tammany Parish

Detention Center and LaSalle Correctional Center. Both stays were

relatively uneventful—each facility respected Landor’s vow and allowed him

to either wear his hair long or to keep it under a “rastacap.” LaSalle even

went as far as to voluntarily amend its grooming policy to allow Landor to

keep his dreads. Then, after five peaceful months—and with only three

weeks left in his sentence—Landor was transferred to RLCC.

Upon arrival, Landor was met by an intake guard. Acting

preemptively, Landor explained that he was a practicing Rastafarian and

provided proof of past religious accommodations. And, amazingly, Landor

also handed the guard a copy of our decision in Ware v. Louisiana Department

of Corrections, 866 F.3d 263 (5th Cir. 2017), which held that Louisiana’s

policy of cutting the hair of Rastafarians violated RLUIPA. Unmoved by our

caselaw, the guard threw Landor’s papers in the trash and summoned

RLCC’s warden, Marcus Myers. When Myers arrived, he demanded Landor

hand over documentation from his sentencing judge that corroborated his

religious beliefs. When Landor couldn’t instantly meet that demand, two

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1

Because this arrives on appeal from a granted motion to dismiss, the facts in the

complaint are taken as true. See White v. U.S. Corr., L.L.C., 996 F.3d 302, 306–07 (5th Cir.

2021).

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guards carried him into another room, handcuffed him to a chair, held him

down, and shaved his head.

After he served his time, Landor sued the Louisiana Department of

Corrections, the prison, Myers, and the Department’s Secretary, James

LeBlanc, in their individual and official capacities. Landor brought claims

under RLUIPA and § 1983 for violations of his First, Eighth, and Fourteenth

Amendment rights. He also pleaded state law claims for negligence,

intentional infliction of emotional distress, and violations of the Louisiana

constitution. Below, the defendants moved to dismiss. As is relevant here,

Myers and LeBlanc argued that Landor’s RLUIPA claims against them in

their individual capacities are barred under our precedent. The district court

agreed and held that those claims were “moot as [RLUIPA] ‘does not

authorize a private cause of action for compensatory or punitive damages.’”

Landor appeals.

II.

We review a district court’s dismissal for failure to state a claim de

novo. Thurman v. Med. Trans. Mgmt., Inc., 982 F.3d 953, 955 (5th Cir. 2020).

To survive a motion to dismiss, a complaint “must contain sufficient factual

matter [] to state a claim to relief that is plausible on its face.” Ashcroft v.

Iqbal, 556 U.S. 662, 678 (2009) (quotations and citation omitted). In

reviewing a complaint, we “accept[] all well-pleaded facts as true, viewing

them in the light most favorable to the plaintiff.” Thurman, 982 F.3d at 955

(quotations and citation omitted).

On appeal, Landor maintains that RLUIPA allows litigants to recover

money damages against officials in their individual capacities. 2 That

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2

The defendants argue that Landor forfeited this argument by filing nothing below

beyond his complaint. While we agree that not pressing an argument before the district

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argument, however, runs squarely into one of our decisions, Sossamon v. Lone

Star State of Texas, 560 F.3d 316 (5th Cir. 2009), aff’d, 563 U.S. 277 (2011)

[hereinafter Sossamon I and Sossamon II, respectively]. In Sossamon I, we

plainly held that RLUIPA does not permit suits against officers in their

individual capacities, which, in turn, means claimants cannot recover

monetary damages. Sossamon I, 560 F.3d at 329. That decision ends this case.

Landor, however, advances two arguments in response: (1) a recent Supreme

Court decision abrogated Sossamon I, and (2) alternatively, our reasoning in

Sossaman I was flawed. We take those in turn.

A.

First, abrogation. To overcome our decision in Sossamon I, Landor

points us to Tanzin v. Tanvir, 141 S. Ct. 486 (2020). There, the Supreme

Court concluded that—under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act

(“RFRA”)—litigants can “obtain money damages against federal officials in

their individual capacities.” Id. at 493. But that’s not enough for abrogation.

Generally speaking, “for a Supreme Court decision to change our

Circuit’s law, it must be more than merely illuminating with respect to the

case before the court”—it “must unequivocally overrule prior precedent.”

Tech. Automation Servs. Corp. v. Liberty Surplus Ins. Corp., 673 F.3d 399, 405

(5th Cir. 2012) (cleaned up). That requires more than merely a “flawed”

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court often means it is forfeited, we generally conclude otherwise when the issue “fairly

appears in the record as having been raised or decided.” Lampton v. Diaz, 639 F.3d 223, 227

n.14 (5th Cir. 2011) (emphasis added) (quotations and citation omitted); see also Walker v.

S. Cent. Bell Tel. Co., 904 F.2d 275, 276 n.1 (5th Cir. 1990) (per curiam) (“The arguments

we are considering, however, were those made by the district court in dismissing the

complaint. . . . [T]here is no rule which forbids [the appellant] from urging that the grounds

given by the district court for dismissing her complaint are wrong.”). The defendants below

insisted—and the district court agreed—that RLUIPA did not allow a suit against officials

in their individual capacities for money damages. Consequently, Landor is now free to

argue to the contrary, and we may hear him out.

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“interpretation of the law” by a past panel. Jacobs v. Nat’l Drug Intel. Ctr.,

548 F.3d 375, 378 (5th Cir. 2008) (quotations and citation omitted). Still, it

is not necessary that the Court “explicitly overrule the circuit precedent at

issue, or specifically address the precise question of law at issue.” In re

Bonvillian Marine Service, Inc., 19 F.4th 787, 792 (5th Cir. 2021). Instead, the

key focus is whether “a former panel’s decision has fallen unequivocally out

of step with some intervening change in the law.” Id. That includes, for

example, decisions that have been “implicitly overruled [by] a subsequent

Supreme Court opinion establish[ing] a rule of law inconsistent with that

precedent.” Gahagan v. USCIS, 911 F.3d 298, 302 (5th Cir. 2018)

(quotations and citation omitted).

Consider Sossamon I. In that case, an inmate sued under RLUIPA to

recover compensatory and punitive damages from several prison officials in

their individual capacities. Sossamon I, 560 F.3d at 321, 322 & n.2. On appeal,

however, we held that “an action under RLUIPA does not exist for

individual-capacity claims . . . .” Id. at 329. We found that although RLUIPA

seems to contemplate “action[s] against defendants in their individual

capacities,” including money damages, doctrine dictated otherwise. Id. at

327 & n.26. Sure, RLUIPA’s language—“any other person acting under

color of state law”—“mirrors the ‘under color of’ language in § 1983, which

. . . creates an individual-capacity cause of action for damage.” Id. at 328

(quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000cc-5). But RLUIPA has other considerations at

play. Unlike § 1983 or its sister statute, RFRA, RLUIPA was “enacted

pursuant to Congress’s Spending Clause power, not pursuant to the Section

5 power of the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id. Spending Clause legislation

“operates like a contract,” so “only the grant recipient—the state—may be

liable for its violation.” Id. In other words, Spending Clause legislation does

not “impose direct liability on a non-party to the contract between the state

and the federal government.” Id. at 329. So, “as a matter of statutory

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interpretation and to avoid the constitutional concerns that an alternative

reading would entail,” we held that RLUIPA did not permit suits against

defendants in their individual capacities. Id. 3

But Landor insists that we’ve been freed from Sossamon I’s shackles

by the Supreme Court’s decision in Tanzin, 141 S. Ct. 486. In Tanzin, the

Court held that RFRA authorizes money damages against officials sued in

their individual capacities. Id. at 493. Starting with the text, the Court

emphasized that RFRA says a plaintiff can sue “official[s] (or other person[s]

acting under color of law)” broadly. Id. at 490 (quoting 42 U.S.C. § 2000bb-

2(1)). Although that is not typically what a suit against the “government”

means, the Court concluded that RFRA simply expanded the horizon to

include officials. Id. Such a conclusion was apparent from context, too. RFRA

employs almost the same language—“person[s] acting under color of

law”—as § 1983, the latter of which the Court had “long interpreted . . . to

permit suits against officials in their individual capacities.” Id. (citation

omitted). Because “RFRA uses the same terminology as § 1983 in the very

same field of civil rights law, it is reasonable to believe that the terminology

bears a consistent meaning.” Id. at 490–91 (quotations and citation omitted).

So, like under § 1983, the Supreme Court found that plaintiffs can proceed

against officials in their individual capacities under RFRA.

What, then, is the proper remedy for litigants seeking to recover

against officials in their individual capacities? Money, for one. Id. at 493.

Generally, the Court read “appropriate relief” as “‘open-ended’ on its

face,” meaning “what relief is ‘appropriate’ is ‘inherently context

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3

The court also held that even if RLUIPA created a cause of action for damages

against officials in their official capacities, such suits were nevertheless barred by a state’s

sovereign immunity. Sossamon I, 560 F.3d at 329–31. It is this conclusion that the Supreme

Court affirmed. See generally Sossamon II, 563 U.S. 277.

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dependent.’” Id. at 491 (quoting Sossamon II, 563 U.S. at 286). And, in the

context of suits against government officials in their individual capacities, the

Court had long blessed monetary damages as appropriate. Id. That was

doubly true for RFRA given that it was passed to “reinstat[e]” the Court’s

prior, more robust protections for the “First Amendment and the right to

vindicate those protections by a claim.” Id. As § 1983 had always permitted

damages “for clearly established violations of the First Amendment,”

“parties suing under RFRA must have at least the same avenues for relief

against officials that they would have had” in the past. Id. at 492. That, of

course, includes money. 4

We held that RLUIPA does not permit suits for money damages

against officers in their individual capacities. The Supreme Court then held

that RFRA does. So, does the latter holding abrogate our former one? We

find that it does not. Reaching that decision is straightforward enough

because, after all, Sossamon I and Tanzin involve different laws. That alone is

not necessarily dispositive—“[s]ometimes a Supreme Court decision

involving one statute implicitly overrules our precedent involving another

statute,” and “[s]ometimes it does not.” Gahagan, 911 F.3d at 302–03

(collecting cases). But the point is made when we look to “the similarity of

the issues decided.” Id. at 303. And, Tanzin doesn’t address, directly or

indirectly, our decision in Sossamon I. Instead, it tackled the existence of

individual damages under RFRA. 141 S. Ct. at 490. Referring to RLUIPA

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4

Not to mention, for some violations of RFRA, damages are not just

“appropriate,” but the “only form of relief that can remedy” the harm. Tanzin, 141 S. Ct.

at 492. For some injuries—like the inability to use plane tickets or the destruction of

religious property—an injunction does not, and cannot, right the wrong. Id. (citing

examples). Since RFRA permits “appropriate relief,” “it would be odd to construe [it] in

a manner that prevents courts from awarding such relief” (especially since, noted the

Court, Congress had restricted remedies to those in equity elsewhere). Id. (citing 29 U.S.C.

§1132(a)(3), 42 U.S.C. § 2000e-5(g)(1), and 15 U.S.C. § 78u(d)(5)).

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only as a “related statute,” the unanimous Court didn’t extend the holding

in Tanzin, much less its logic, to RLUIPA. The Court’s sole mention of

RLUIPA differentiates the case from a prior one, Sossamon II. Id. at 492–93.

That relative silence makes sense, though: RLUIPA and RFRA rely on

different Congressional powers. See Holt v. Hobbs, 574 U.S. 352, 357 (2015)

(noting RFRA’s basis in the Fourteenth Amendment and RLUIPA’s in the

Spending and Commerce Clauses).

That distinction wasn’t lost on other circuits. 5 For example, in Mack

v. Warden Loretto FCI, the Third Circuit grappled with this distinction, too.

839 F.3d 286, 303 (3d Cir. 2016). In recognizing individual damages under

RFRA, the court distinguished its prior prohibition on such a remedy under

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5

Most other circuits’ reasoning tracks ours in Sossamon I (i.e., that because

RLUIPA is Spending Clause legislation, non-recipients of funds cannot be liable). See, e.g.,

Washington v. Gonyea, 731 F.3d 143, 145 (2d Cir. 2013) (“RLUIPA does not provide a cause

of action against state officials in their individual capacities because the legislation was

enacted pursuant to Congress’ spending power . . . which allows the imposition of

conditions . . . only on those parties actually receiving the state funds.”); Sharp v. Johnson,

669 F.3d 144, 154–55 (3d Cir. 2012) (“Pennsylvania, not Defendants, was the direct

recipient of any federal funds. Thus, RLUIPA cannot impose direct liability on Defendants,

who were not parties to the contract created between Pennsylvania and the federal

government.”); Nelson v. Miller, 570 F.3d 868, 887–89 (7th Cir. 2009) (same); Wood v.

Yordy, 753 F.3d 899, 904 (9th Cir. 2014) (“The statute does not authorize suits against a

person in anything other than an official or governmental capacity, for it is only in that

capacity that the funds are received.”); Stewart v. Beach, 701 F.3d 1322, 1335 (10th Cir.

2012) (agreeing with Sossamon I); Smith v. Allen, 502 F.3d 1255, 1269–76 (11th Cir. 2007)

(same). A couple of the other circuits advance a slightly different, but still related, line of

reasoning. Rendelman v. Rouse, 569 F.3d 182, 187–89 (4th Cir. 2009), declined to answer

whether Spending Clause legislation can impose liability on non-recipients, holding instead

that either way, RLUIPA did not provide clear notice that it was doing so. Haight v.

Thompson, 763 F.3d 554, 567–70 (6th Cir. 2014), also held that RLUIPA did not clearly

impose any such liability as a condition of accepting funds, but explicitly denounced the

third-party liability rational as “prov[ing] too much.”

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RLUIPA. Id. The court, in other words, was “unmoved . . . by the similarities

in the text of RFRA and its sister statute, RLUIPA.” Id.

Although the judicial relief provision in RLUIPA mirrors that

in RFRA, RLUIPA was enacted pursuant to Congress’s

powers under the Spending Clause, thereby allowing Congress

to impose certain conditions, such as civil liability, on the

recipients of federal funds, such as state prison institutions.

Because state officials are not direct recipients of the federal

funds, and thus would have no notice of the conditions

imposed on them, they cannot be held individually liable under

RLUIPA. RFRA, by contrast, was enacted pursuant to

Congress’s powers under the [Fourteenth Amendment] and

thus does not implicate the same concerns.

Id. at 303–04 (emphasis added).

In response, Landor insists that because RLUIPA’s and RFRA’s texts

are almost the same, we should read RLUIPA the same way the Supreme

Court read RFRA. After all, the two laws are often treated similarly. See e.g.,

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby, 573 U.S. 682, 696 n.5 (2014). But “[i]n law as in

life, . . . the same words, placed in different contexts, sometimes mean

different things.” Yates v. United States, 574 U.S. 528, 537 (2015). The

Supreme Court has often held “that identical language may convey varying

content when used in different statutes, [and] sometimes even in different

provisions of the same statute.” Id. (collecting cases). Where “the scope of

the legislative power exercised in one case is broader than that exercised in

another, the meaning [of identical words] well may vary to meet the purposes

of the law . . . and of the circumstances under which the language was

employed.” Atlantic Cleaners & Dyers v. United States, 286 U.S. 427, 433

(1932) (citations omitted). That’s the case here. Section 5 of the Fourteenth

Amendment and the Spending Clause do not empower Congress to the same

degree, and Tanzin does nothing to fill that gap.

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In sum, we concluded in Sossamon I that although RLUIPA’s text

suggests a damages remedy, recognizing as much would run afoul of the

Spending Clause. Tanzin doesn’t change that—it addresses a different law

that was enacted under a separate Congressional power with “concerns not

relevant to [RLUIPA].” Tanvir v. Tanzin, 894 F.3d 449, 467 n.12 (2d Cir.

2018), aff'd, 141 S. Ct. 486 (2020). Because Sossamon I remains the law,

Landor cannot recover monetary damages against the defendant-officials in

their individual capacities under RLUIPA.

B.

Landor raises one final argument. He contends that our Spending

Clause analysis in Sossamon I was flawed from the outset. Landor suggests

that, per Sabri v. United States, 541 U.S. 600 (2004), “Congress has the

power under the Spending Clause . . . to impose liability on officials who

work” for a recipient of federal funds. But Landor’s reading of Sabri is

flawed.

In Sabri, a real estate developer tried to bribe a Minneapolis official to

get preferential treatment in his dealings with the municipality. Id. at 602.

When Sabri was caught, he was charged under 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(2), or

“Theft or bribery concerning receiving federal funds.” Id. On appeal, the

Supreme Court found § 666(a)(2) to be a valid exercise of Congressional

authority under the Spending Clause. Id. at 608. Now, Landor contends that

Sabri’s conviction is proof positive that Congress can “bring federal power

to bear directly on individuals,” namely third parties who aren’t privy to a

funding agreement, under the spending power. But that’s an oversimplistic,

expansive reading.

Sure, Sabri recognized that Congress has the “prerogative to protect

spending objects” by targeting individuals who aren’t a party to the contract.

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Id. at 608. That decision rested on a common-sense extension of the spending

power—Congress can safeguard its allocated dollars from bribery,

embezzlement, and “local administrators on the take.” Id. Criminal

punishments are simply a “rational means” for securing the valid use of

federal funds. Id. at 605. From that it doesn’t necessarily follow that

Congress has the power to hold third-party, non-recipients (e.g., employees)

responsible for violating RLUIPA. As the Court said itself, Congress may

impose criminal liability on those “who convert public spending into

unearned private gain.” Id. at 608. Landor’s situation, both legally and

factually, simply isn’t comparable. Sabri involved criminal liability for a

person who directly threatened the “object” of a spending agreement,

namely federal dollars, while Landor is a civil case that’s based on conduct

unrelated to the federal purse. The Third Circuit similarly recognized the

limits of Sabri in an RLUIPA case.

Sharp’s reliance on [Sabri] for the proposition that Congress

may regulate the actions of third parties under the Spending

Clause, is misplaced. In Sabri, Congress enacted the statute

at issue, 18 U.S.C. § 666(a)(2), pursuant to its powers under

the Spending and the Necessary and Proper Clauses to

protect its expenditures against local bribery and corruption.

Here, however, Congress did not enact RLUIPA to protect

its own expenditures, but rather it enacted RLUIPA to

protect the religious rights of institutionalized persons. Thus,

Sabri is inapposite.

Sharp v. Johnson, 669 F.3d 144, 155 n.15 (3d Cir. 2012) (citation omitted).

The Ninth Circuit, too, has employed likeminded reasoning. In Wood

v. Yordy, the plaintiff argued that Sabri “means defendants in a civil damage

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action under RLUIPA need not be recipients of federal funds.” 753 F.3d at

903. The Ninth Circuit—emphasizing the need to monitor monetary

disbursements under the spending power—found that wasn’t “a sensible

conclusion.” Id. In sum, as the Sixth Circuit found, “RLUIPA is nothing like

the Sabri statute.” Haight, 763 F.3d at 570. We agree.

III.

We emphatically condemn the treatment that Landor endured. Still,

we remain bound by our prior decision in Sossamon I that, under RLUIPA, he

cannot seek money damages from officials in their individual capacities. In re

Bonvillian, 19 F.4th at 792 (the rule of orderliness). Because the district court

correctly held so, we AFFIRM.

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