Three Native American advocacy groups are backing a former Louisiana prisoner's U.S. Supreme Court petition for damages after guards forcibly shaved his head, arguing that the case presents issues vital to Indigenous cultural survival.

The National Congress of American Indians, Huy and the United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund, in a Wednesday brief, argued that the Supreme Court has underscored Congress' intentions on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, or RLUIPA, on creating robust protections for religious exercise in state prisons.

Comprehensive and enforceable legal protections are necessary to deter state prison officials from violating the religious liberties of imprisoned practitioners of Native religions, they told the court.

Unless RLUIPA is construed as providing effective remedies — including damages against individual prison officials — as Congress intended, the law's legal protections will be meaningless to many, the advocacy groups said.

"Incarcerated Native people are likely to continue to face the forced haircutting that has long been an intentional tool of religious persecution and forced assimilation," they argued.

The case centers on Damon Landor, a practicing Rastafarian who was forced to cut his dreadlocks in a Louisiana prison.

According to his petition, Landor was serving a five-month sentence for drug possession when he was moved to the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center. When he got there, Landor claimed, he gave guards a copy of a Fifth Circuit ruling from 2017 stating that prisoners were allowed to keep their dreadlocks while in custody, only to watch the guards throw the copy in the garbage and cut his hair.

Landor is seeking monetary damages against the guards, but a Fifth Circuit panel last year upheld a district court ruling that he couldn't pursue those claims against the officials.

In an 11-6 vote, the full circuit court denied his bid for an en banc rehearing, but the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case in June, which will feature whether an individual can sue government officials for damages over violations of RLUIPA.

Landor's challenge centers on two "sister" statutes: the Religious Freedom Restoration Act — or RFRA — of 1993 and RLUIPA. Both bar the government from substantially burdening an individual's exercise of religion without a compelling interest, but the 2000 law applies specifically to people "residing in or confined to an institution."

Justices are set to hear arguments in the dispute in November, according to court records.

The tribal advocacy groups argue that Congress provided that individuals whose rights are violated under RLUIPA may seek "appropriate relief," using language identical in relevant part to the RFRA.

"This court has recognized that this same language in RFRA includes damages against government officials acting in their individual capacities," they said, citing the 2020 ruling in Tanzin v. Tanvir.

Forced haircuts, they told the justices, have long been a tool of religious suppression and forced assimilation. For many Indigenous individuals, unshorn hair is sacred, and its importance prompted the federal government in the 18th and 19th centuries to use the method to stamp out Native religion and compel assimilation into non-Native culture.

The continued subjection of incarcerated Indigenous people to forced haircutting in state prisons perpetuates this pattern of religious intolerance and forced assimilation, the tribal groups said.

Practices surrounding wearing hair long, and cutting it only under certain conditions, is an ancient and deeply rooted facet of many Native American religions, according to the brief.

Uncut hair often symbolizes and embodies the knowledge a person acquires during a lifetime, it said. Hair may be braided to express the integration of mind, body and spirit, and it is common for specific hair preparations to be part of Native religious rituals and ceremonies, such as a ceremonial cutting in the observance of a loved one's death, the groups said.

"By contrast, forced haircutting desecrates a Native person's body and spirit and is an egregious confiscation of personal dignity," they told the high court.

History, they said, establishes that legal protections for religious exercise in prison have waxed and waned, but today RLUIPA is intended to be a sturdy shield against infringement of religious liberty.

"As we see in Mr. Landor's case, some of the most upsetting religious injuries suffered by incarcerated people are inflicted by the individuals who supervise them on a day-to-day basis. Recognizing that the law provides for financial damages in lawsuits against those individuals can help prevent unlawful conduct and protect religious freedom, which can be important for people seeking to live full, healthy lives," Native American Rights Fund attorney Sydney Tarzwell, representing the National Congress of American Indians, said in a Thursday statement.

Landor is represented by Zachary D. Tripp, Shai Berman, Natalie Howard and Sarah Sternlieb of Weil Gotshal & Manges LLP, and Casey Denson of Casey Denson Law LLC.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety is represented by Louisiana Attorney General Elizabeth B. Murrill, Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga, and Kelsey L. Smith, Autumn Hamit Patterson and Phyllis E. Glazer of the Louisiana Attorney General's Office.

The federal government is represented by U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, and Harmeet K. Dhillon, Yaakov M. Roth, Sarah M. Harris, Sopan Joshi, Yael Bortnick, Michael S. Raab and Lowell V. Sturgill Jr. of the U.S. Department of Justice.

The National Congress of American Indians is represented by Jacqueline De Leon and Sydney Tarzwell of the Native American Rights Fund and in-house by Geoffery Blackwell.

The United South and Eastern Tribes Sovereignty Protection Fund is represented in-house by Kaitlyn E. Klass.

Huy is represented by Emily Delisle Hobbs of Hobbs Straus Dean & Walker LLP and Gabriel Galanda of Galanda Broadman PLLC.

The amici are additionally represented by Joel West Williams and Akilah J. Kinnison of Hobbs Straus Dean & Walker LLP.

The case is Damon Landor, Petitioner v. Louisiana Department of Corrections and Public Safety, et al., case number 23-1197, in the U.S. Supreme Court.

--Additional reporting by Jared Foretek. Editing by Alex Hubbard.